


No Dead Lesbians

by frnklymrshnkly, hpwlwbb, Saulaie



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: 70s music, 90s music, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Bill Weasley is a good friend, Birth, Bisexual Character, Body Image, Body Positivity, Camaraderie, Casual Heterosexism, Coffee, Dancing, F/F, Family, Fleur’s POV, Found Family, Getting Together, Injustice, Lesbian Character, Magical Theory, Making the best of things, Morning Sickness, Muggle hospitals, Nostalgia, Order of the Phoenix - Freeform, Potterwatch, Remus Lives, Second Voldemort War, Self-Reflection, Sirius Lives, Tonks Lives, Trust, Unexpected Pregnancy, Warding, Wartime Resistance, Weight Gain, a hint of Franglais, basically a bunch of characters live thanks in part to Fleur being a badass comrade, blink and you’ll miss it reference to fearing miscarriage, body - Freeform, breakfast foods as expressions of love, buzz cuts, communal living, critique of medical institutions, diverges at the end of Goblet of Fire, dramatic streaks, dungarees, fast burn, godfathers, hufflepuff dreams, official relationship upgrades, queer banter, reference to a past experience of sexual harassment in the workplace, slumber party stamina, soft butch energy, strained mother-daughter relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-24
Updated: 2019-06-24
Packaged: 2020-05-12 17:44:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 42,912
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19234036
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/frnklymrshnkly/pseuds/frnklymrshnkly, https://archiveofourown.org/users/hpwlwbb/pseuds/hpwlwbb, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Saulaie/pseuds/Saulaie
Summary: That one where Fleur joins in the Order, falls arse over teakettle in love with Tonks, becomes bffs with Sirius Black, and accidentally gets Tonks pregnant, all while banterously fighting the good fight against Big V.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks: No words to express the magnitude of my thanks to my cheer and beta readers, [ violetclarity ](https://violetclarity.tumblr.com)and [ aibidil](https://aibidil.tumblr.com). Thank you both for helping me make these characters act like actual humans and not robots just trying to imitate human emotions and behaviours. You are both the actual best. Thanks also to [ Novaa ](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Novaa/pseuds/Novaa)for helping me out with some French expressions--any remaining issues are absolutely mine! Finally thanks to [GingerTodgers](https://gingertodgers.tumblr.com) for giving me some really helpful info about the NHS which I then had mostly to ignore/handwave for plot reasons. (Don't @ me, folks; if TV judges can allow 'highly irregular' guff, so can I.)
> 
> Violet, look, it happened! Thank you for being my partner in this. Modding this fest with you has been delight. I love you, pal.
> 
> And to [ Saulaie](https://saulaie.tumblr.com), thank you for creating a magnificent piece of art for this. Your skills boggle my mind.
> 
> Disclaimer: These character's are JKR's. No money being made.
> 
>  **Artist's Medium/Notes:**  
> [saulaie](https://saulaie.tumblr.com/) (tumblr) medium: digital art  
> saulaie notes: Pinch-hitting for this fest has been the greatest choice, and I’m glad I could contribute at least a tiny bit to it. I can only hope I did Frnkly’s great Flonks justice.

Prologue

_6 January 1996_

_Evasion de masse à la prison britannique d'Azkaban!_

Fleur sits at her kitchen table alone, reading the paper. She was enjoying a scalding cup of black coffee and an éclair, but the headline has made her stomach roil. Her mind wanders upstairs for a moment, to her bedroom, where she’d retreated when she returned from Hogwarts for the summer. 

She wasn’t avoiding her family; far from it. Gabrielle had practically moved in with her, sleeping in bed beside her, eating pastries with Fleur at all hours and joining in her complaints about the crumbs as if they weren’t lying in a mess of their own making. When Fleur tossed and turned, body cold with adrenaline sweat from nightmares in which she’d relived the feeling of being Stupefied—helpless and frozen inside an insidious maze—Gabrielle would shush her and tell her she was okay: she was safe, she was here, she was home. 

Fleur’s parents both have full time jobs, but late in the evenings, when they are all home, they ask Fleur how she feels that day, voices heavy, hoping she’ll talk about it, or, perhaps pleading subconsciously that she won’t, that with time the memories of being attacked, of one of her fellow competitors dying—will fade, and with them, her moodiness.

Fleur’s not sure if it was time that did the trick. She thinks writing to Harry had something to do with it.

She had spent the first weeks of July crumpling up parchment and breaking quills in frustration. What did one say in this instance?

 _How are you?_ Asinine.

 _I can’t stop thinking about what happened._ As though it was all about her. That’s part of what’s been bothering her, if she’s honest. From the the time that tacky cup spat out Harry’s name, it was all about him. At first she was livid about having her thunder stolen by a little boy, but the second task upended her conception of Harry. And by the time she was being revived by the Hogwarts matron and Harry was screaming over Cedric’s body, she’d been forced to accept that, despite her optimistic imaginings of carrying the cup back to Beauxbatons and proving to her classmates that she was more than a pretty face, the whole thing had been about Harry—from beginning to end. The girl who’d arrived, sure she’d be chosen to represent Beauxbatons, would never have fathomed that winning the tournament would be so unenviable.

 _Are you okay?_ How could he be? She isn’t, and she hadn’t been with Cedric to see it happen.

Fleur prides herself on being honest. She’s never felt shy about sharing her opinions. At school her classmates might have rolled their eyes or muttered under their breaths when Fleur held court. So for a few days she thinks, over and over, about the most honest thing she can say to this boy. Finally, she decides upon: _I underestimated you. I’m sorry—about everything. It is unjust. I owe you. We all do._

Hélène had returned two days later with a brief but perfectly cordial response from Harry assuring Fleur she owed him nothing.

Magical French news doesn’t often cover the goings-on in Britain, so Fleur is left to wonder how the situation Harry’s facing is developing. She often thinks about writing Harry again, especially since Gabrielle’s term started last September and her primary (truthfully, her only) companion had left her alone in the house for the better part of five days a week, but she doesn’t want to seem like a creep or a stalker. She’s had plenty of experience with people repeatedly, aggressively demanding her attention. It would be a lie to say there’s not a part of her than enjoys attracting attention, but it’s equally true that after the initial shine wears off, it becomes incredibly tiresome. The pay off never lasts. 

Though she’s only shared one letter with Harry, Fleur and Viktor write more regularly. From him, by way of Harry’s best friend, Fleur finds out that Harry’s been on the business end of libellous attacks against his character from the British papers since June—people refusing to believe what’s right in front of them. Fleur thinks of Harry, breaking through the surface of the lake, gasping for air and clutching Gabrielle. She thinks of Cedric and the easy grace with which he carried himself. He was clearly gifted, fair minded and level-headed, a hard worker. Plus, he never once perved on her. He was a class act, as far as Fleur is concerned. 

She looks back to the paper. The cover shows the faces of ten Death Eaters. The followers of the man who killed Harry’s parents in cold blood, who murdered Cedric just because he was there.

Fleur grabs her coffee and heads to her room to write another letter.


	2. Chapter 2

_7 January 1996_

A crack of Apparition outside the house. But it’s much too early for Maman or Papa to be home. Fleur is in her usual position: alone at her desk in her upstairs bedroom, nose buried in one of her university textbooks, _The Shape of Magic: the Principles of Arithmantic Spell Construction_. 

It’s the middle of a Tuesday afternoon. She has no classes today. Anyone she knows around here is at away at work or school. And none of them would come to pay her a visit, in any event, not that she’d want to pass an afternoon with any of them anyway. Gabrielle, of course, is back at Beauxbatons after the Yule break. Fleur feels her absence all through the house. After five years of painful separation, they’d had only two years together at school. Despite the years that separate them, they have been as thick as thieves since Gabrielle was a baby and Fleur was allowed to hold her in her lap, always sitting on the sofa or a chair, cradling Gabrielle in her arms, supporting her neck with the greatest of care. Fleur’s never been as close to anyone as she is to Gabrielle. She thinks it’s cruel that they are divorced by time. 

She puts down her book, exchanging it for her wand, and heads downstairs. She can hear the pea gravel outside the house, brittle with winter cold, crunching under the feet of whoever is here. It sounds like two people stepping in different times. Fleur already has her hand on the door knob when the knock comes. She looks through the peephole. She’s not sure what she’s expecting. 

Eye at the peephole, Fleur expects to see a stranger, perhaps someone collecting for charity, or a politician campaigning—they live in a Muggle area. Instead, she sees a face she recognises on the other side of the lintel. Fleur recalls these same eyes sizing her up back in Scotland. She flicks her long hair out with her right hand, straightens her back, and opens the door.

“Fleur Delacour? Sorry, that’s not a question. I know who you are. I saw you at the Triwizard Tournament. I’m Bill Weasley. Professor Dumbledore sent us.” Bill says in a rush, offering Fleur his hand. A woman next to him sporting an electric pink buzzcut and a shambolic ensemble sketches a wave, unbalancing herself as she does so.

“Wotcher,” she says, finding her balance. “I’m Tonks.”

“Fleur.” She shakes Tonks’s hand.

“Great handshake,” Tonks observes. “Firm. That’s important.”

“My father says so, too,” Fleur agrees, with a small, amused laugh. She does, in fact, pride herself on an assertive handshake, but it’s such an odd thing to say as a compliment. She’s not sure why she laughs, though she’s been hard up for things to laugh about since she left Hogwarts, to say nothing of company to laugh with since Gabrielle left for Beauxbatons. 

Fleur leads them into the kitchen. She gestures for Bill and Tonks to sit down at the hardwood table and gets the gas going on the Muggle cooker. “Coffee,” she states. It’s not a question. She’s serving coffee—superb coffee—and if they don’t like it, c'est la vie. But they both nod, saving Fleur the trouble of remarking on the poor culinary tastes of the English. From a cupboard over the sink she Summons three percolators and a swing-top jar of coffee she ground this morning, then sets herself to spooning grounds into each percolator before adding water and putting all three over the flames.

“The coffee will not take long.” Fleur takes a seat at the table next to Tonks. Bill is making a gallant effort of not staring or drooling or trying out stupid chat-up lines on her, and Fleur’s keen to encourage him to stay the course.

“Ta,” Tonks says, smiling.

“You don’t brew coffee with magic?” Bill asks.

Fleur scrunches her nose. “You have no patience,” she chides Bill. “Magic ruins the beans.”

Tonks laughs, and, for a moment, Fleur thinks she’s the butt of the joke. She’s used to that—people sniggering or casting sideways glances at the way she expresses herself. Her posture stiffens and she gives her hair another nervous flick of her wrist. She sees Bill avert his eyes, ears reddening.

“You’d hit it off with Arthur,” Tonks tells her.

“My father,” Bill explains, looking at Fleur again, visibly trying to remain nonchalant. “He’s a bit of a Muggle technology fanatic.”

“He’s got the horn for anything Muggle,” Tonks appends. 

Fleur feels her neck and shoulders relax at the knowledge she isn’t being mocked. She hasn’t really spoken English since she left Hogwarts in Madam Maxine’s flying carriage, and one of the things she misses most—aside from the last vestiges of forced camaraderie with her classmates—is learning new slang. The first thing any teenager learning a new language wants to know are the raunchy words. “Horn?” She asks, bringing one hand to her forehead in a mime of the word. “Like a unicorn horn? I do not think I have heard this expression.”

Bill’s cheeks redden to match his ears. 

“Oh, sorry!” Tonks chuckles. “The horn is like, being horny—you know that one?” Fleur nods, and Tonks continues. “Except here it’s like, a way of saying he’s obsessed—like he has a hard-on for Muggle gadgets.”  
Bill chokes on his own spit. He’s probably embarrassed by the thought—even in jest—of his father being remotely sexual. He’s probably repressed; he is English. “Does that make sense?”

“Yes.” Fleur logs ‘the horn’ away for later use in English conversation, then tries to bring them round to the point of their visit. “Dumbledore sent you.” Fleur’s keen to find out why these two are here. Part of her, a part she tamps down deep, would love to let her guard down and enjoy some friendly banter with a couple of people her own age for the first time in months, but once these two finish up this task, they’ll be back across the channel. Fleur may never see them again. “With a message for me?” She had not expected a response to her letter within twenty-four hours.

“Are we done poking fun at Arthur?” Tonks asks.

“What does Dumbledore say?” Fleur presses. 

The easy smile on Tonks’s face flags, which makes Fleur feel a bit harsh, but she tries not to dwell on it. “We have a letter for you from Dumbledore.” Tonks reaches into the embroidered pocket on the breast of her red corduroy dungarees. Fleur has never owned anything like them. The cloth is garrish, really, and the embroidery—a heart comprised of yellow roses—is nothing short of matronly. Gabrielle now has all of Fleur’s delicate silk uniform dresses, and Fleur’s own closet is largely filled with black frocks and skirts in various form-fitting cuts, along with some blouses and knit jumpers—all of which she’s been tailoring periodically over the last months as her measurements have expanded, the unavoidable result of living on a diet of comfort foods and taking no exercise. Fleur’s always prided herself on her dress sense; gaining a few inches hasn’t changed that. But oddly, sitting with this woman, with her electric hair and her dungarees and her huge t-shirt that makes it impossible to guess what her body looks like underneath, Fleur feels, for the first time in her life, drab. 

Tonks hands Fleur a letter from Dumbledore and she reads it silently. It doesn’t take long. When she looks up from the parchment, Bills looks a bit anxious, as if unsure how she’ll respond—as if he wants her to say yes, and he’s worried she’ll let him down. Tonks’s smile is back, though it has a shade less radiance than it did when she was commenting on Arthur Weasley’s horn. 

“My flat isn’t much,” Tonks informs Fleur. Bill snorts. “Got something to say about my housekeeping, Billiam Weasley?” Tonks’s accusation is damped by her light, amused tone.

“I didn’t say anything,” Bill deflects.

“You chortled,” Tonks accuses. “Unmistakably. And I don’t see you showing me up with your domestic prowess. The situation in my flat has definitely deteriorated since you moved back from Egypt. I shudder to think of the squallor you were living in back there.” 

Fleur thinks they look like a decent match. Tonks with her sunny frumpiness, Bill with his fang earring and long hair. They wouldn’t look out of place in one of her Muggle magazines, perhaps in one of the pieces on American fashion crimes lamenting the state of youth culture in the Pacific Northwest. The main difference, as Fleur sees it, is that, far from slouching around in it, Tonks wears her dowdy outfit as though it’s the latest La Croix. It couldn’t be clearer that she dressed to please herself and left it at that. She doesn’t move elegantly or easily, doesn’t seem preoccupied with the state of her appearance—she doesn’t pick at fluff, doesn’t periodically re-adjust fabric covering her body. It’s like she’s wearing a second skin. Bill, on the other hand, is wearing highly polished dragon hide boots, form-fitting, ripped jeans, and a leather jacket. He wants to be seen, and it makes Fleur not want to indulge him.

“I never learned those kinds of charms!” Bill grouses, pulling Fleur back to the conversation.

“Me neither,” Tonks admits, “though not for any lack of trying by Mum, I can tell you.” She winks at Fleur, who’d be more taken with it if she weren’t despairing of the state of British education.

‘They don’t teach you how to clean up after yourselves at Hogwarts?” Fleur asks in disbelief. 

“No mate, we’re spoilt. You’ll have to accept my preemptive apologies for how revolting my flat is. My dad’s a slob—it’s genetic. I can’t be held culpable.”

“Your flat?” Fleur searches for the point amidst the tangent. She can hear the boil rising in the percolators—they’re nearly ready to take off the heat. Fleur gets up, pulling her skirt down where it rode up when she sat down, and takes up a ready stance by the cooker.

“You’ll be living with me. Well, with us—” Tonks jerks a thumb in Bill’s direction— “in York. My flat isn’t anything to write home about, but it’s up the way from a decent club and there’s a café downstairs where the sour cherry tarts are worth your left tit.”

“Good English confectionary?” Fleur remarks, skeptically, levitating the percolators off the heat when the boil sounds right. 

As Tonks calls her a snob in an incongruously light tone, Fleur Summons three mugs and pours before sending Tonks’s and Bill’s over to the table and snatching her own out of the air.

Once she’s resumed her seat, Fleur takes a sip of steaming black coffee from her mug. She looks at Bill again. “You know Harry,” she states simply. “I saw you and your mother, I think? with him at the Triwizard Tournament.”

“Harry?” Bill sounds surprised. “Yes, he’s my youngest brother’s best mate.” He smiles.

“How is he?” Fleur asks. 

“Safe.” Bill’s smile turns to a grimace.

Fleur nods once. There’s clearly more to that than he’s saying. She sips her coffee, and thinks of Harry Potter and how easy and pleasant it was to be around him, of all the things she thought about putting in her letter: how he saved Gabrielle without a second thought, how he never once leered at or became inarticulate around her, how brave he was—shatting every expectation she held of a fourteen-year-old boy. She looks around her childhood home. It’s become a solitary place: Maman and Papa away most of the day working, Gabrielle at school. When Fleur isn’t in a university lecture hall, she’s here, alone. And when she _is_ at school... well, her looks have often impeded her relationships with other girls and women. In school she’d enjoyed the feeling of being the most popular, the one everyone wanted to be friends with, even if it came with a constant undercurrent of jealous resentment. Now that she’s out of school, no longer cohabitating with a pack of girls her age—ready made chums, if grudging ones—Fleur feels increasingly alienated. 

She’s almost nineteen, hardly too young to leave the nest. Of course, that doesn’t mean she needs to leave the _country_. But what’s keeping her here? Gabrielle has years of school left. Fleur thinks about the people she does see—the distrustful looks she gets from the women in their neighbourhood when they see her, especially if their husbands are around. Fleur looks at Bill, who knows Harry. She looks at Tonks, who exudes a kind of easy, casual confidence Fleur has never encountered. She thinks of the words in Dumbledore’s letter—that they’re all in danger, especially Harry Potter, how he’s aware she’s studying theoretical arithmancy and ancient runes, how she could put her considerable intellect towards the resistance, towards protecting him. She thinks again of Harry. _I owe you_. She thinks, finally, of this house—empty, most days, but for herself.

“How soon can I move in?” Fleur asks Tonks.

“Then you’ll come? Great!” Tonks exclaims, sloping a bit of coffee over the rim of her mug. “Sorry about that,” she apologises. “I’m a bit clumsy.” For the first time, her confidence seems to waver. “Let me clear that up.” With a quick _Scourgify_ , the coffee on the table is gone, but there’s a streak left behind. “Can’t believe I wasted this black gold,” she remarks. Fleur nods and smiles in smug acknowledgement of the compliment. “I only have have a Muggle coffee maker at home. Helps to have a pot or three before an all-night stake out, you know?”

“Tonks is an Auror,” Bill explains.

“You are a cop?” That shocks Fleur. Amongst all of the hipster jobs she would have guessed Tonks might hold, Auror would never have crossed her mind.

“Dark witch and wizard catcher,” Tonks corrects, then thrusts a thumb in Bill’s direction again. “Pretty boy here didn’t even get in.”

“Didn’t _apply_ ,” Bill corrects. “I didn’t _apply_ because I wanted to be a Curse Breaker.”

“You say tomato,” Tonks says to Bill, then adds, for Fleur’s benefit, “Bill has six siblings and a mother who could mollycoddle for England. The Curse Breakers gave him the chance to flee.” 

Bill shrugs, not denying any of it. “You know how family can be.”

“I get along well with mine,” Fleur says. “My father is Muggleborn and my mother’s mother was a Veela. It can be difficult to fit in, but we have each other.”

“That’s lovely.” Tonks smiles at her. Fleur smiles back. Easy camaraderie isn’t something she’s experienced much. But Tonks seems, from this first impression, remarkably funny and open hearted. Fleur finds it disarming. It hardly feels like she’s asking Fleur to come to England and risk her life for a pack of strangers. That all feels far off, as theoretical as Fleur’s experimental arithmancy. 

Despite the prospect of leaving this house, or, perhaps, because of it, all Fleur feels is the unexpected warmth of hearing the commiserations of two people her age, two people who have come on behalf of Britain’s greatest living wizard to take her up on her offer to help. She’s been acquainted with them for a quarter of an hour at best, but when Tonks says they should be going, Fleur wilts a little. She feels like a sunflower, turning to face sunbeams. Except she can’t; she’s not completely self-centred; she adores her family, and she would never skip countries without telling them in person. 

After they leave, Fleur clears away the mugs, the coffee, and the percolators. She Scourgifies the counters, and, with a clean kitchen, sets to making supper for her parents, something scrumptious to ease the coming blow.

*

_22 February 1996_

Fleur is on the sofa, surrounded by parchment and textbooks. For once, she’s not paying them any attention. Instead, she’s reading the paper Bill or Tonks must have left on the coffee table— _The Quibbler_. The article is filled with everything Fleur has wanted to ask Harry about the maze, the graveyard, and the murder. She’d only overheard snippets as Harry was dragged away by the Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher. Reading what Harry has to say makes her want to cry, except she’s never been much of a crier. It makes her feel sick, but simultaneously fortified by Harry’s defiance, which reverberates through every word. 

She should keep working. If a fifteen-year-old can find a way to circumvent the government’s systematic attempts to silence him, the least she can do is keep up with her assignment, even if she’s not in school anymore.

Officially, Fleur works at Gringotts under the guise of improving her English (which is excellent, if you please). She’s only been in York for a couple of weeks, working Monday to Friday as teller. It’s not what she’d imagined. Bill is a Curse Breaker, though since moving back to England, he works the research side. Fleur knows for a fact that her school results were more robust and impressive than his—she asked. But instead of breaking curses, or researching _how_ to break curses, she spends her mornings and afternoons handling other people's money, and not making much of her own. During the rare hours that Bill and Tonks are actually in the flat at the same time as her, Fleur complains about how overqualified she is for the job. Not that she’ll refuse to do it. She’ll do it alright, for Harry’s sake. But she doesn’t have to be happy about it.

Her working hours aren’t stimulating. She expends far more energy trying to ignore the way so many customers stare at her and yammer about their clearly non-existent venture-capitalist enterprises than she does fulfilling their official requests. The Goblins, on the other hand, are immune to her charms. It surprises her how gratifying she finds that. 

When she leaves Gringotts each evening, though, that’s when her real work begins. If she’s not on the clock or sleeping, Fleur reads voraciously. Upon her arrival in York, Dumbledore greeted her at Tonks’s apartment with a veritable column of books and asked her to acquaint herself with their contents. Fleur does. Her official job grants her no access to the Ministry, like Tonks’s. Nor does it offer opportunities to deepen her knowledge of breaking dark enchantments, like Bill’s. She’s benched, and applying herself to Dumbledore’s assignment is the least she can do. He’s rather cagey about it, which is annoying. But she’s not stupid enough to think everything she’s reading about the mechanics of and theory behind Apparition is purely academic. So when she punches the clock and gets back to the flat, she reads, takes notes, and jots down calculations until her head aches and her eyes blur. Between her paid labour and her efforts for the Order, she has few free hours. But she still seems to have more than Tonks, who often goes straight from Auror duty to Order missions. With his own overtime hours and seemingly infinite family members all demanding his attention, Bill is absent nearly as often. So Fleur takes it upon herself to stay on top of the flat. She goes to Lidl to do the shopping even though the quality sucks, as the English say, because she can (almost) afford the food there with her small, entry-level salary. She cooks, albeit with substandard ingredients, and eats supper in the company of her books.

All things considered, living in a one-bedroom flat with two other people isn’t so bad. If nothing else, she often has the place to herself. In fact, Fleur soon finds herself wishing that Bill and Tonks spent more time at the flat; she’s home most often by far. And besides, she attended boarding school for seven years—she’s used to communal living. Even if she weren’t, her erstwhile escorts are so easy to live with Fleur wonders if Dumbledore didn’t dose them both with permanent Comrade Concoctions while they were still at school. Quickly after she arrived, Fleur confirmed what she’d already assumed, that Bill and Tonks were school chums. When he came back from Egypt, Tonks graciously offered to let Bill kip on her trundle bed while he looked for a place of his own. 

When Fleur moved in with nothing in her valise but books, clothes, toiletries, and a percolator, Tonks was impressed with her light packing. “Your glamourous lodgings,” she told Fleur, sweeping one arm to show off a lumpy sofa as though it were a king size bed with 1200-thread-count sheets.

The three of them are living on top of each other. But, as Bill and Tonks are the only people in the country apart from Harry Potter and Dumbledore that Fleur has any meaningful familiarity with (Fleur does _not_ count Roger Davies, and with Harry at school she’s seen hide nor hair of him—she’s not sure he even knows she’s here), Dumbledore suggested the shared quarters. Fleur is not unhappy with it. Even if she were, she doubts she’d be able to afford anything better on her salary. 

But Fleur doesn’t feel like much use, which chafes. Whenever Dumbledore pops round or sends an owl to check in, he never fails to remind her that he considers her research and experimentation to be of the utmost importance. It reminds her of the Triwizard Tournament: so much time spent reading, conceptualising, preparing, so little spent problem-solving, _doing_. Regardless, she’s determined that, when the time comes, she’ll make a better showing for Harry than she did for Beauxbatons.

On mornings when Tonks or Bill are still around when Fleur wakes, they thank her for doing the washing up, getting the laundry done, leaving leftovers hot under stasis charms. All these, Fleur has tasked herself with. To be sure, she likes to live in orderly quarters. When Bill and Tonks are around, she also likes pointing out that they’re as slovenly as each other.

A loud _Crack!_ interrupts Fleur’s Dumbledore-assigned reading and and tells her one of her flatmates has returned. The subsequent _Crash!_ of someone falling over in the hallway and taking the hat stand for the ride informs her it’s Tonks.

“Bonsoir!” Fleur calls from the sofa.

“Wotcher,” Tonks yells back, entering the living area, still wrestling rogue coats off of herself, leaving them on the floor in her wake. “Is there—”

“Roast potatoes in the kitchen,” Fleur preempts.

“You fucking beauty,” Tonks says, looping back into the kitchen. “I could eat a troll.” 

“How was work?” Fleur asks when Tonks stolls back into the living area, carrying a heaping plate of potatoes and piling them into her mouth.

“Don’t ask,” Tonks says, then launches straight into a tangent about all the ways in which John Dawlish is a disgrace (today Kingsley, Tonks’s partner, had called in sick and Tonks had been temporarily assigned to Dawlish, who’d proceeded to let a criminal Petrify him, leaving Tonks to manage the perp and his cohorts on her own, “which I did because I’m _competent_ ,” Tonks rages around a mouthful of spuds).

Fleur imagines Tonks, with her clumsiness and her ill-fitting clothes and her poor ‘table’ manners, standing in some derelict building surrounded by a ring of criminals she’s Disarmed and Stupefied. She thinks it should be a difficult image to conjure; Tonks—dungaree wearing, joke cracking, flat-sharing Tonks—is so sweet Fleur can’t imagine her zapping a fly. But Fleur knows appearances can be deceiving. 

“How are the books?” Tonks asks.

“Bien.” Fleur shrugs one shoulder and tosses the one she’s holding onto the floor at her feet in her best above-it-all manner. “I wish I were doing something to help properly.”

“Hey,” Fleur recognises Tonks’s tone as portending a pep talk. “Dumbledore gave you this job; he wouldn’t have bothered bringing you here if it weren’t important. You’re doing your bit.” Tonks smiles and it looks so earnest, like she’s not worried about whether grinning with her mouth full of (crispy on the outside, soft on the inside) potatoes makes her look uncouth or not.

“Merçi.” Fleur nudges the spine of her book with one toe. There are several others next to it on the floor. Bill hadn’t been exaggerating about the flat. Nothing is filthy, but there are odds and ends everywhere. Fleur does her best to pick up after the three of them, but she also contributes to the general life detritus. She doesn’t think she’s seen the top of the coffee table or the surrounding floor since she moved in. Fleur flops backwards, leaning on the back of the sofa. 

Tonks plops herself down next to her. “You know, what you need is to get out a bit. You’re always here.”

Fleur stiffens at that, sitting up from her lounge and moving her arm so that her hair cascades over it in an elegant wave. “I am at Gringotts five days a week,” she says defensively. “If you want more time alone—”

“Oh no!” Tonks cries. “I didn’t mean it that way. I meant, you know, you need to get out for a bit of fun. Have a laugh, you know?”

Relief washes over Fleur and she resumes lounging. She may not know Tonks well, but she has the distinct impression that, despite being some hot shit Auror, she’d be a terrible liar. “You’re one to talk. You only leave this flat for crime solving and espionage.”

“You know about the espionage?!” Tonks puts a hand over her heart in mock alarm. Bill and Tonks don’t talk openly about their separate Order assignments. Or, at least, not within earshot of Fleur. She consoles herself in Tonks’s reminder that Dumbledore wants her here. She may not be in on everything. She may not even know yet _exactly_ what her job is. But she’s here and she’s doing everything Dumbledore has asked of her. 

“I am not an idiot,” Fleur says, finally. 

“No.” Tonks swallows a mouthful and tosses her plate on top of some of Fleur’s books, fork rattling dully on the cheap ceramic. “Fuck, I’m tired.” She yawns. Then asks, “So, are we going out or what?”

After Tonks pulls off her Auror robes, sniffs her armpits and pronounces, “This is fine,” she leads the way from the flat to the nearby club she’d mentioned back in Fleur’s kitchen.

At the door, Tonks pulls out some Muggle banknotes and pays their cover. Inside, Fleur shouts over the noise, “I will pay you back!” 

“Don’t worry about,” Tonks yells in her ear. “You can repay me by keeping up with me on the dancefloor!”

Tonks buys each of them a lager and they head to the dancefloor, drinks in hand. Fleur thinks she’s got the better half of the bargain tonight, though she’s feeling a bit more shy than she’s used to in such a setting. She hasn’t been anywhere but Diagon or the supermarket (or the sour cherry tart place, which has turned out to be delicious indeed) since she was in France. And even then, it had been a while. She actually has to strain to remember the last time she danced. She recalls the Hogwarts Yule Ball, where boys looked at her, starry-eyed. She’s not as svelt as she was then. She hasn’t been letting herself think about it much, but now, in a club full of people wearing their trendiest clothes, she feels the extra pounds. She does her best to put it to the back of her mind and have a good time. Tonks helps with that. Her dancing is not a far cry from the erratic moves she’d seen on the dancefloor when the Weird Sisters were playing. At the time, Fleur had scoffed from the sidelines. Now though, Tonks dancing is like an invitation to get out of her own head. Fleur joins in the spectacle rather than mocking it from the sidelines. The last six months of her life have been the most sedentary of any she can remember; no longer climbing hundreds of castle stairs a day or running around the grounds with her classmates, she’s winded and aching soon, but she doesn’t want to stop. Tonks, despite complaining about her sleep deprivation the whole walk over, is dancing with vigour to a repetitive and annoying, yet somehow danceworthy, tune that consists of some twangy banjo and the vocalist repeating “Cotton-Eyed Joe” a lot. Fleur ignores her rising heart rate and keeps dancing, focussing on Tonks. Fleur can feel eyes on them: perhaps because of their careless moves, perhaps because it is not strictly prudent, maman always cautioned, for a Veela, even a part Veela, to dance in public. There is a part of Fleur that hopes it’s the latter, that her charms have not vanished. And so she keeps dancing despite maman’s counsel. Fleur lets Tonks’s easy manner sweep her up in the fun, lets herself be distracted from thinking about all of it, lets the stares on them fade away.

After a couple more up-beat songs, their drinks are empty and Fleur is parched. “Let’s grab another,” Tonks yells in Fleur’s ear, shaking her bottle to make her point, in case Fleur can’t hear her. Fleur nods and Tonks grabs one of Fleur’s forearms to pull her off the dancefloor. The place is designed more for dancing than sitting, but it’s early enough that there’s an empty booth. Tonks nods to it and shouts in Fleur’s ear, “You claim the booth; I’ll get more drinks.”

Tonks lets go of her arm so that Fleur can scooch into the booth. There’s already a small queue at the bar. Fleur watches Tonks waiting, gesticulating animatedly to the bartender and her fellows in the queue. Fleur hasn’t been out on the town—or out at all—with Tonks before, but Tonks making fast friends while she waits for their drinks strikes her as entirely in character. Fleur looks at her arm where Tonks had hold of it, then switches back to watching Tonks. While she does, she can feel others’ gazes on her. She tries to ignore them. Her pointed disregard drops when Tonks grabs the two lagers the bartender hands her and starts to head back. But before Tonks can weave her way to the booth, someone else appears in front of Fleur. Some lad, nondescript, asking her if she fancies a dance. She ignores him haughtily until he scarpers. 

When Tonks takes a seat, tripping over the step up to the booth, but managing not to spill too much of their drinks before setting them down on the table, she leans close to Fleur’s ear and asks loudly, “He fancy a dance?”

Fleur nods and takes a sip.

“You could have danced with him; I wouldn’t mind.”

“I would have.” 

“Fair enough,” Tonks shouts over some track with a thundering base line. “But, you know, if you want to dance, or go on the pull—” she waggles forest green eyebrows that match today’s shaggy hair “—I won’t be put out. You’ve got your own key. You can let yourself back into the flat.”

“Thanks.” Fleur has never met anyone as nice-for-no-reason as Tonks. It would be off-putting if it weren’t so compelling. She feels obliged to return the nicety. “If you want to find someone, do not let me stop you. It is as you said: I can get back on my own.”

“Ah, that’s not what I meant.” Tonks takes a sip of her lager. “I just want you to have a good time.”

Fleur looks Tonks in the eyes. “I _am_ having a good time. With you. But I do not interact with strangers who chat me up. Others cannot understand; it is a part of being a Veela.”

Tonks looks in rapid turns surprised, then contemplative, then amused, and shouts back, “Ego much? I mean, I know you’ve got the whole half-Veela thing going on, but also, a lot of people are just basically hornswaggerlers.”

“ _Pardon_?”

Tonks laughs. “I just mean… that lad probably just wanted to get a leg over. It’s Friday night—anyone will do. And you spend all your time at work or at home. You don’t want to meet anyone, don’t want to dance. You think you’re too good to dance with the have-nots?”

“I danced with you,” Fleur points out. “I enjoyed it.”

“Of course you did! I’m a superb dancer,” Tonks dismisses. 

Fleur never thought of it that way. Since puberty (even before, she shudders internally) people have been rendered inarticulate around her. Fleur always assumed that being fawned over was the curse of the (part-)Veela; it hadn’t occurred to her that it, or at least some part of it, was so much simpler, so much more prevalent.

“I…” Fleur thinks of how she can explain it without sounding like the world’s most massive egoist. “Everywhere I go, people stare, even though I have—” she falters. “Even though I am heavier now, men will not leave me alone. Most people are at least flustered around me; they say the stupidest things, trying to impress me. It is tedious. I know what I look like, how it makes people feel—most people,” she adds quickly, then elaborates.“You do not act foolish around me. At least, not any more than you do around Bill.” 

“Mate,” Tonks says, voice graver than usual. It’s the same tone of voice she uses when she’s being truthful with Bill about how doofy his hair looks after it’s been freshly shampooed and fluffy or what a doormat he is when it comes to his mother. Even as the sound of it makes Fleur brace herself for some hard truth, she’s warmed by the familiarity that the tone conveys, heartened that Tonks is speaking to her in this way, like a real friend. “I can look however I want. I can look prettier than you without trying. You think being pretty makes you special?” Tonks raises one hand to her face and uses it like a partition, concealing herself from the rest of the room, and shifts. Her hair remains the same, but her face changes into Fleur’s, only not quite. All the slight asymmetries are corrected. She looks like Fleur if Fleur were mathematically flawless. From almost-Fleur’s face, Tonks looks at her, eyes searching, as though mining for evidence that Fleur has indeed let her down by misjudging her. She shifts back to her own visage. Fleur is relieved, and not because she minds being the second-best-looking person at the table.

Fleur had thought, over the past weeks living with Tonks and Bill, that Tonks was doing her best to ignore the proverbial Erumpent in the room of Fleur’s beauty—that, perhaps, Tonks was interested in Bill and hadn’t wanted to appear jealous and insecure. Fleur had thought, if nothing else, that Tonks was determined to do right by Dumbledore by being a gracious hostess. Suddenly, though, Fleur realises it’s simpler than that. 

“I always have.” Fleur answers, finally. “Everyone has always told me I am special. Or treated me like I am.”

Tonks shakes her head. She’s smiling and swigging her lager again, as though Fleur’s confession has restored her faith in their budding friendship. 

“What about you?” Fleur asks, since they’re sharing. She’s never learned to be unsure of herself when it comes to these matters, but right now, in this dingy, noisy English club, she finds herself for the first time thinking of what she can do to prove to Tonks she’s not shallow, that she’s worth getting to know, worth _liking_. It is an all-new feeling to her, to adopt the role of suitor rather than unwitting wooee. “You do not think being Metamorphmagus makes you special?”

Tonks shrugs one shoulder. “It’s an asset in my work. I don’t use it to look like Kate Moss.”

“No,” Fleur agrees. “You are not concerned with looks,” she realises. 

“Gee, thanks,” Tonks says, though with a good-natured laugh.

“I meant no offence.” Fleur doesn’t know if it’s the lager or the real talk Tonks has shared with her, but she finds herself desperate to ensure that Tonks understands. “Do not mistake my meaning. I admire you—your style, your confidence.”

“Style!” Tonks barks out a laugh. “Next time my mum tries to convince me to go to Twillfit and Tattings with her for some “adult clothing,” I’m definitely going to tell her that a French lass who owns nothing but pencil skirts and fitted silk blouses likes my dress sense.” Tonks shakes her head again, dissolving into laughter at what she clearly considers a highly amusing mental image.

“I mean it!” Fleur whacks Tonks’s shoulder gently with the back of one hand. “You wear everything with confidence. I have been wondering if you have always done this, or if it is since you became an Auror. Or perhaps being able to change your appearance gave you this confidence?” Fleur stops for a moment to take another fortifying sip. “Or maybe this is just how you are.”

Tonks clinks her bottle against Fleur’s. “Bit philosophical for me, mate. Fancy dancing some more?”

*

The next morning Fleur is awoken suddenly and finds herself hungover. She opens her eyes and sees Bill pacing back and forth, disappearing into the kitchen for a few moments before reappearing in the living area and turning around to repeat the motion.

“Why are you pacing?” Fleur demands.

Bill gives the _Daily Prophet_ he’s reading a shake by way of explanation. As the weeks have passed, being around Fleur seems to be getting easier and easier for Bill. He’s less flustered around her, and now they can easily gripe about work or joke around. He’s never made a pass at Fleur, for which she is truly grateful. More to the point, with every late night, after-work conversation they have, Bill treats Fleur more and more like a friend. She is grateful.

Well, she usually is. Right now she’s appalled at his choice of reading material. Fleur sits straight up to admonish him, head reeling. “Why are you reading _that_?” Fleur has very uncharitable thoughts about the rag that slanders Harry every other issue. 

Bill stops pacing. “I’m looking for a flat to let.” His voice is hushed. 

Fleur thinks about the conversation at the club last night and panics. “Did Tonks say something? Should I also be looking?” Fleur shudders to think what she’ll have to do if Tonks wants her out of here. She’s fairly sure that Dumbledore would find her somewhere else to stay, but she doesn’t want to go.

“Oh, no! If I’m honest, I think she’ll be a bit tetchy when I tell her. But I can’t stay here forever.”

Fleur’s spirits sink still lower. If he—a good friend of Tonks’s—can’t stay here, how can she? 

Her thoughts must be written on her face, because Bill adds, “Fleur, seriously, don’t worry. Tonks loves having us both here, I’m sure of it. I just need my own place, is all. It’s nothing to do with either of you. Since I left Hogwarts I’ve lived on my own in a whole different country than my family and most of my friends, you know? I’m not used to living in such close quarters anymore. I promise Tonks hasn’t said anything that makes me think we’re cramping her style. Actually,” Bill scrubs the back of his neck with his hand, “I’d appreciate it if you didn’t tell her just yet. I can’t face her Disappointed Look right now.”

“Disappointed to have her bedroom back to herself?” Fleur says, thinking of the trundle bed next to Tonks’s. Fleur wonders if she was right in the first place, if they are together, or at least sleeping together. If they are, they’re sneaky about it. She never hears any evidence, not even the tell-tale silence of a charm.

“I don’t know if you spent enough time at Hogwarts last year for this to mean anything to you, but I guarantee you, sharing your flat with as many of your mates as possible is like, the Hufflepuff dream.” Bill lowers his voice a bit more and confides, “She talks my ear off when I get in, you know? It’s like every night is a slumber party. I don’t know where she gets the energy. She’s always complaining she’s not getting enough sleep.”

Fleur smiles broadly despite her full-body queasiness. “Je ne sais pas. Yesterday she came home exhausted and then took me dancing.” Fleur pauses, throwing caution to the wind and continuing. “She is really something.”

Bill gives her a knowing look and just says, “I know, mate.”

_May 1996_

After a couple of months of dodging invitations to Sunday dinner with the Order in favour of working her way through her assigned reading, Bill finally insists. Well, actually, Tonks insists. She and Fleur have gone out a few more times since their first club night back in March. They drink a bit and dance a bit, Tonks always sporting a new hairdo, Fleur consummately ignoring the eyes of strangers upon her. After a couple of months though, Tonks puts her foot down.

“It’s just not healthy to spend all of your time with two people. One really, since Bill moved.” Tonks looks a bit sad—Bill had been right; Tonks misses him. Fleur does too. 

“Everyone is dying to meet you,” Tonks continues. “And I bet you’ll get on with Remus and Sirius like a cauldron on fire! Besides, don’t you fancy seeing Bill? He hasn’t been round in weeks.” 

Fleur can hear Bill’s voice in her head whispering ‘Hufflepuff.’ She hasn’t the heart to say no in the face of Tonks’s good-faith attempt to help her make friends.

Before they leave the flat, Tonks hands Fleur a scrap of parchment that reads: _The Headquarters of the Order of the Phoenix is Number 12, Grimmauld Place._

“Seriously?” Fleur scoffs. “Diagon Alley, Grimmauld Place…”

“You’re seriously brazen enough to mock an aptronym?” Tonks asks, holding out her arm in an invitation to Side-Along. Fleur weaves her arm around Tonks’s bent elbow.

Headquarters is like something out of a post-modernist’s take on nouveau gothic. It’s mouldering to a degree that almost seems intentional—like it’s been left to rot as some dilettante's magnum opus. 

The owner greets them at the door with another man about his age. “Sirius Black. Wow, Bill wasn’t kidding.” He and Fleur share a picture-perfect handshake, neither weak nor shoulder wrenching. It’s the porridge that Goldilocks chose. “You have no idea what a relief it is to have you here. I’m sick of being the best-looking one.” He clearly means it, yet he shows no sign whatsoever of being attracted to her. “This is Remus.” He looks at the other man with cow eyes. _Ah_. 

Remus shakes her hand. His cheeks show a faint blush, but he is perfectly composed. “We’re pleased to meet you.”

“Though it’s rather more of a punishment than anything, spending the evening here.” Fleur can tell Sirius is aiming for a joke, but the exuberance with which he greeted her flags a bit as he gestures to the house at large with a haughty wave. Fleur notices deep frown lines between his eyes and on his forehead, his too prominent cheekbones and lustreless hair. After just a beat too long, he seems to gather or else fake some more joviality. “I’d welcome you in French,” he tells Fleur as he ushers them into the house, “but I hate my family, you see. I couldn’t bare it if anything they forced me to learn with my governess actually proved useful.”

“Don’t mind Sirius,” Remus tells Fleur. “He’s been trying to perfect his Byronic melancholy since fourth year.”

Fleur laughs. “Old money?” 

“That obvious?” Sirius replies.

“You posh English either resent your parents or want to marry them.” 

Tonks pulls a face of mock indignation. “What about me?” she demands loudly. “Sirius and I are related, and you never accuse _me_ of being a toff or having an Elektra complex!” 

Remus shushes her. “Tonks, the portr—”

Caterwauling fills the hallway. “Go ahead,” Remus shoos them down the hall. “Sirius will take you to the kitchen. Bill and Kingsley are downstairs with the others. I’ll deal with Sirius’s detestedly-departed mother.”

“Down here.” Once they’re out of the hall, Sirius opens a door and leads them down a flight of stairs to the kitchen.  
Bill hugs Fleur and Tonks, then introduces Fleur to his parents, Molly and Arthur (whose ears go a little pink, but greets Fleur with nothing more than polite warmth), as well as two Hogwarts staff members she’s seen but not properly met—Minerva and Alastor (who scrutinises her, but with an air of trying to sniff out a criminal, not a mate). Finally, Tonks introduces Fleur to her partner, Kingsley, about whom Tonks speaks often and highly. He welcomes Fleur as a comrade. After the introductions, conversation resumes around the table. Molly gets up to tend to the food. Fleur and Tonks offer to help Molly only to be chivied back to the table in a fluster. They take seats together, across from Bill and next to Kingsley.

Dinner is a bit uncomfortable. Eyes flit between Fleur and Bill, between Tonks and Bill, between Fleur and Tonks. Fleur is intimately acquainted with being gazed at, but this feels different. She is sure their dinner companions are trying to read her, Bill’s, and Tonks’s body language to suss out their dynamic. They’re probably all thinking about how Bill came home and moved in with Tonks, and then left after Fleur came on the scene. Fleur can nearly hear the mental cogs whirring. She knows what this is—the people around this table think she and Tonks are both interested in Bill, and they’re trying to decide which of them he’s shagging, or whether he’s having it off with them both.

“So, Fleur,” Molly says in a rather clipped tone. “Do you have a beau back in France?” She sounds nearly desperate for Fleur to say, ‘Yes, I am engaged, actually. We are getting married in the summer!’ 

“No,” Fleur says simply. Even if Fleur were fucking every member of the Order, it would be none of this woman’s business.

An awkward silence falls around the table, but conversation soon picks up again. Arthur and Kingsley work at the Ministry, like Tonks, and together they bring everyone up to speed with the goings-on. According to them, Fudge and his supporters are getting ever more manic about ignoring indications of “You-Know-Who’s” return.

“Why do you work there, if this is the status quo?” Fleur asks. 

Tonks looks taken aback. “I’ve always been an Auror.”

“It’s useful to have people on the inside,” Kingsley answers, which is a better answer, in Fleur’s opinion. “Inside we can overhear things, have access to the corridors of power, so to speak. We can recruit.”

“We’re always feeling people out, you know?” Tonks elaborates. “Trying to figure out whether it’s safe to broach the subject of You-Know-Who. But I admit, it’s hard for me to understand how people I’ve worked with for years can bury their heads in the sand.”

“Many think they have nothing to fear from Voldemort,” Remus chimes in, the first time he’s spoken since they all thanked Molly for the spread. “Fudge is a pureblood, and his government hasn’t been nearly as proactive on Muggleborn, Half-blood, or Creature rights as he promised when he was campaigning.”

“True,” Arthur agrees. 

“We see it in the Aurors,” Tonks admits. 

Kingsley nods in agreement. “We’re all trained investigators, but some seem committed to ignoring the evidence in front of them.”

Molly latches onto the mention of the Auror department, pointing out in tones of performative, exaggerated praise how prestigious it is to be an Auror, especially before thirty, how hard it is to get accepted into training at all, shooting Bill looks as though to ask, ‘Are you listening, young man?’ It annoys Fleur. Molly should be able to praise Tonks sincerely, without trying. Fleur doesn’t need to know everyone’s life stories to know without a shadow of a doubt that Tonks is kindest person at this table. Molly instructs Bill to get Tonks something more to drink and to serve up dessert. “Tonks first, Bill love.” 

Fleur is embarrassed for Molly. She wants to tell Molly to stop worrying about Fleur stealing Bill away from Tonks, that she has no interest in anything but his friendship. She looks away from Molly, casting her eyes down the table to where Remus and Sirius are sat together. Remus is trying to hide a laugh behind a goblet while Sirius gives Molly an unabashed look of disbelief. Fleur decides she likes them.

When supper is over, Fleur automatically starts clearing the table and begins the washing up, ignoring Molly’s frosty insistence that Fleur needn’t trouble herself. When the kitchen is tidy, Sirius and Remus see Fleur and Tonks to the door.

“I admire your fortitude in the face of adversity,” Remus tells Fleur quietly as Tonks trips over her own feet while trying to lace up her Doc Martens. 

“Molly just can’t imagine any woman not being arse-over-teakettle for her first born,” Sirius advises Fleur.

“She’s more unwittingly heterosexist than homophobic,” Remus adds. “She’s been having dinner with us every Sunday for nearly a year and still asks me when I’m going to find some nice witch and settle down.” 

“You and Tonks would never occur to her,” Sirius informs her.

Fleur tucks her hair behind her ear nervously and looks down the hall to Tonks. In less than three hours, and with very few words passed directly between them, these two have her number. Just like Bill. Fleur’s not embarrassed about anything, but it’s odd to feel like she’s being scrutinised for this. She’s so accustomed to being the pursued. 

“Ready?” Tonks calls, skipping back up the hall to Fleur, Remus, and Sirius and throwing an arm around Fleur’s shoulders.

“Tonks!” Sirius stage whispers. 

The shrieking starts up again. Remus and Sirius excuse themselves while Tonks and Fleur make for the door and, once outside, Apparate home.

Back at the flat, Fleur and Tonks lounge around, mulling over the dinner. Tonks keeps yawning and saying she needs to go to bed, but she sticks around in the sitting room, somehow finding second, third, and fourth winds to keep chatting. Bill had been right about Hufflepuff sleepover stamina. All in all, Fleur is grateful to have been invited—included in an Order institution. Aside from Molly, everyone had been friendly. She’d genuinely liked Sirius and Remus, and she’d instantly understood why Tonks speaks so highly of Kingsley.

“Sorry about Molly,” Tonks says, sliding off of the sofa and onto the floor, where she begins stretching out her muscles. Perhaps this is also normal Hufflepuff pre-bed behaviour? “She has terrible gaydar. I’m pretty sure she still hasn’t clued in about Remus and Sirius.”

“She hasn’t; they told me.” Tonks hasn’t said anything about her sexuality since they’ve met, and Fleur doesn’t want it to seem like it phases her, so she talks around Tonks’s remark. “She wants Bill to settle down with you.” Fleur hazards an educated guess. “She thinks it will tie him to England permanently.”

“I didn’t mean me,” Tonks says. “I do like lads. Well, some lads. Sometimes. I meant you.” 

“Oh.” Fleur looks Tonks in the face and refuses to look away. She shouldn’t be surprised. Two strangers had called it in a number of hours, and she’s been living with Tonks for months. Plus, Fleur’s pretty sure Tonks is more emotionally intelligent than those two put together. Sirius had definitely been making fart noises at the dinner table to annoy Molly.

“I know it’s a bit indelicate to bring it up,” Tonks says. “But I wanted you to know it’s okay. We don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to.”

But having Tonks bring it up emboldens Fleur. She reaches towards Tonks, sitting on the floor with one leg outstretched, flexing then pointing her toes, stretching out her hamstring. She grabs Tonks’s toes to stop her, and says, plainly, “I want you.”

Tonks pulls her toes out of Fleur’s grasp and stands up. For a moment, Fleur thinks she’s made an egregious misstep, but Tonks puts her out of her misery by bending forward and reaching out her hand to Fleur, who takes it and lets herself be pulled up off of the sofa. “And here I thought you were too up yourself to ask,” Tonks says, before leading Fleur into her bedroom.


	3. Chapter 3

_18 June 1996_

Fleur and Tonks are in bed. Tonks sits astride Fleur’s hips, running her fingers over Fleur’s skin, not quite a scratch, not quite a tickle. Months ago, in Fleur’s kitchen, Fleur had wondered what Tonks’s obscuring clothes might hide. As it turns out, Tonks is fairly muscular thanks to her job. After a lifetime of feeling like the most attractive person in the room, when they shuck their clothes Fleur can’t help but compare their bodies, and finding her own wanting is a new experience for her. Thoughts of stocking the fridge with celery and switching from tarts to unsweetened herbal tea cross her mind. And yet, Tonks does nothing to make her feel undesirable. Quite the opposite: under Tonks’s attention, as she squeezes Fleur’s arse or runs fingers over her love handles or bites her way up Fleur’s thighs or grabs her round hips to pull her close, such thoughts abate. In bed, Tonks tells Fleur she wants her, or what she wants to do to her, or asks Fleur for what she wants. But it’s not a serious business. They have fun, make each other feel good, laugh. Fleur learns how fun it can be to play wrestle and joke about how weird sex is between orgasms. Tonks doesn’t tell Fleur she’s perfect or how hot she is. Being swept away by Tonks—or, as the case may be, being invited to do the sweeping—feels so different from the hungry looks Fleur is used to that she’s not even sure she can call both things desire. 

It’s funny, Fleur thinks, how Tonks hasn’t been working any less—if anything, between the DMLE and the Order, she’s working more—yet she seems to bend time, to pop back to the flat between shifts for a quick shag, or, if time is seriously pinched, a few minutes of necking. 

_Crack_! 

“Tonks? Fleur?” Bill yells. His footsteps search them out.

Tonks is lying on top of Fleur. At Bill’s voice, she plants one hand on each side of Fleur’s head and pushes herself up so that they can see one another properly. “Do you mind if Bill knows we’re having it off?” 

Fleur gives Tonks her best ‘are you kidding me?’ look and calls out, “We are in here!” Then adds in an undertone, “This had better be an emergency.” They start to get up, to go see what Bill is here for, but before they’re even out of bed Bill throws the door open. He doesn’t look surprised, but nor does he look smug and knowing. He doesn't look happy for them, or flustered to find them naked. He looks like shit.

“Get up. Now. Harry’s at the Ministry. You-Know-Who is there. We have to go.”

Tonks jumps out of bed and Fleur follows suit. Bill says they’re in the Department of Mysteries and Disapparates. Tonks and Fleur dress at record speed, grabbing whatever is nearest to hand. Fleur ends up in the shirt Tonks had pulled off of her before they were interrupted and a pair of tearaways Tonks tosses her her from her chest of drawers.

Tonks zips up her flies. She doesn’t ask Fleur if she’s sure about coming. She just grabs Fleur’s hand, says, “No dead lesbians, you hear me?” and takes them to Harry.

*

Several hours later, the Order is back at headquarters, minus Dumbledore, who’s taken Harry back to school. Sirius is ranting loudly about letting his cousin, Bellatrix, Stun him and live to tell the tale.

“She was captured, though,” Remus consoles him. “And we’re lucky Fleur grabbed you, or you might have fallen through—” he cuts himself off. He looks pale and sick at the thought. 

“I had it under control,” Sirius says, as though he himself hadn’t been Stunned, nevermind acknowledged it mere moments ago as a key aspect of his Bellatrix tangent.

Over the coming hours—Fleur thinks she can detect daybreak outside the windows—Sirius somehow gets more and more into his element rather than hitting a wall with and adrenaline crash. It’s as though getting out of the house and throwing down in a duel for his life and the life of his lover and godson and comrades, even getting Stunned as he did so, has done more to energise him than a year of unwanted rest at Headquarters.

Order members are scattered throughout the house. Arthur, Bill, and Kingsley are drinking tea in the kitchen. Sirius had paced away some time ago (Fleur doubts he had any particular destination) and Remus followed him off. Fleur’s in the library with Tonks.

“It’s a miracle we all came out alive,” Tonks says, speaking for the first time in a while. “No bodies. What the fuck are the odds on that?”

“Too high,” Kingsley answers as he enters the room, Arthur and Bill behind him. Silence follows. In it, Fleur can hear the unspoken words: “It won’t be like this, next time.”

“We fought our way out, together. We can do it again.” Tonks looks at Fleur. She sounds so sure, so hopeful. She puts one of her hands, palm up, on the sofa cushion between her and Fleur, an invitation. Fleur takes it. Bill smiles at them.

The hours progress, Sirius and Remus rejoin them, bringing a bottle of Firewhisky that they all pass around like a bunch of fifth years up past curfew. The full light of morning shines bright outside the windows when Dumbledore arrives. To the assembled Order members, he says his piece, talking gravely about the seriousness of the situation, but encouraging them all to take heart that Voldemort can no longer hide away, stirring up fear and distrust between the factions who believe him to be back at large and those determined to deny it. His meaning is plain: things are only just beginning. This will not be their last scrimmage.

After months spent with bank notes, textbooks, and theoretical equations, it feels surreal. Fleur recalls every time she wished she were in the shit with Tonks or Bill, or even without them, but still doing something. She feels like a foolish little girl for not appreciating the stakes. With her top marks, with her Triwizard experience, she thought she was an asset. But in the last few hours she’s beginning to realise her real job here is to put one more body between Harry and danger. She could be anyone.

When Dumbledore finishes, he asks Fleur for a word. Fleur lets go of Tonks’s hand and follows Dumbledore downstairs, into the library. 

“Headmaster?” Fleur asks once they’re alone. 

“Albus, please,” he says kindly. And she must sound nervous, because he continues, “There is no cause for alarm. I have an assignment for you. You needn’t keep it from Tonks. Indeed, not from any Order member. I merely asked for privacy to avoid putting you on the spot, as they say, in front of our comrades.”

“Oh?” Fleur feels stupid, torn between relief that she doesn’t need to keep something from her lover, and slightly chagrined to find that she’s not being given some Top Secret mission.

“I should like you to put the theories you are studying into practice.”

“To achieve what, exactly?”

“We are now indisputably at war. We are, I do not think it is hyperbolic to suggest, within days or weeks of the streets becoming dangerous, even fatal. Our ranks shall be especial targets. The Floo network has been compromised for months. Since his presence can no longer be denied, Voldemort will no doubt maneuver his people into key roles in the Ministry, or else have them Imperius those who already hold such positions. Apparition is a fine mode of transportation, of course, except that in order to ensure the safety of Order members, we cannot dwell where the wards are lax enough to allow Apparition in or out.”

“Of course.” Fleur nods. Everything he says makes sense. It’s grim.

“I should like you to find a way around that. Your reading has not been a purely intellectual exercise, though I do hope you found it stimulating. We must move quickly now, you understand. Every Order member living outside of Hogwarts or a _Fidelius Charm_ is but two steps up from a sitting duck. You and Tonks will have to consider what you will do. We could place your flat under a Fidelius Charm, or you could discuss moving in here. Regardless, I have no doubt that, given time, and with the help of our comrades at your disposal, you will find a way for us to move between our safe houses.” Dumbledore sounds as though he’s giving a gifted student an exciting challenge, not delegating a life and death task to a nineteen-year-old.

“Professor?” Fleur ventures.

“Go ahead, my dear,” Dumbledore encourages. “An unspoken question is a waste. In most cases.” Fleur spares a thought to wonder what it would have been like to attend a school run by this man.

“This task, many would dismiss it as impossible.”

“A common reaction to things yet unknown.”

“D’accord. But I wonder…” She is not usually hesitant to speak her mind, but nor is she in the habit of admitting she might not be up for a task. “If you cannot solve this problem, what hope have I?”

Dumbledore brightens instantly. “I confess, I should relish the opportunity to try, and I shall never turn away any request you may have for help that I can offer, but with the situation as it is—” Dumbledore breaks off for the tiniest of moments. There’s something in that pause, but Fleur can only look at his sparkling eyes and wonder what it might be. “With so much to do, I find myself short of time.”

*

_July 1996_

“Fuck off, Sirius.” Tonks points her wand at him. “It’s universally known that it’s despicable to change the song part way through.”

“Put on something good then,” Sirius argues, finger holding down the fast-forward button, easing off every now and then to stop and cringe at the sounds that resume.

“Don’t be a prick just for the sake of it, Sirius,” Remus chides.

“But it’s bad, Moony,” Sirius whines.

“Remus, do something,” Tonks demands. 

“Emmylou Harris isn’t bad, Sirius,” Remus obliges.

“Good music has a beat you can dance to,” Sirius insists.

“I have nothing against dancing!” Tonks yells, as though she’s been accused of a heinous crime. “But right now we’re having Angsty Ballad Hour.”

“Angsty Ballad Hour?” Sirius repeats in disparaging tones.

“If you let me enjoy this album in peace, I’ll let you pick the next album without complaint. I won’t even leave the room in protest.” 

“How long is this album?” 

Tonks Summons the cassette case, pulls out the folded paper inside, and reads aloud, “53 minutes and six seconds.”

“Fine,” he huffs. 

“Good, now rewind it and start it from the beginning.”

Sirius acquiesces before dropping onto the sofa, crossing his arms petulantly over his chest, and resting his head on Remus’s lap.

Since the battle in the Department of Mysteries, Tonks has been working everyday. Fleur used to think that Tonks had some sort of preternatural energy source that kept her perpetually lively. But under her increased workload, Fleur finally watches Tonks’s energy flag. 

After living at Beauxbatons for the better part of seven years, it felt a bit frenzied to be moving again after only six months. She and Tonks discussed Fideliusing the flat and staying. Fleur would have been happy enough with that, but something about the prospect of living with Sirius, this family member Tonks is still getting to know, and with Remus, who always has a subtle, sarcastic quip ready with an accompanying eye roll for whatever Sirius has to say, appealed to Tonks and so, for Fleur, the decision was an easy one. Practically speaking, it also made undeniable sense to house a large number of Order members in the same place. Even those who don’t live at headquarters, like McGonagall—safe at Hogwarts—or Arthur and Molly, who refused, point blank, to leave the Burrow, are often around. It makes it easy to stay in the loop. 

It’s only been a few weeks since they moved, but for Fleur, the best thing so far is seeing Tonks in her element. The months they’d spent alone at the flat were so brief, and their private moments so few and fleeting. They have even less alone time now. But, paradoxically, living communally is showing Fleur more sides of Tonks. She’s been attracted to Tonks, in the most literal sense of the word, from the moment she arrived on Fleur’s doorstep. Now though, Fleur gets to listen to Tonks and Sirius argue about which decade has produced the best music of the century, or overhear Kingsley and Tonks talking gladly about being vindicated amongst their colleagues, or tell Molly that this or that adage is sexist. It’s a joy.

The biggest difference, though, is that Fleur’s new assignment (one that Dumbledore seems to take quite seriously, if his regular in-person and by-owl check-ins are any indication) has redoubled her sense of purpose. She’s always loved working with her mind, and yet it’s more gratifying now, knowing that she’s working towards something bigger than herself. She’s still working at Gringotts, but now when she gets home she heads to the library and tries to find a way to make everything she’s learned work for her—for them all. And when Tonks gets home from double shifts at two am, Fleur follows her to bed; she sleeps well next to Tonks, if too briefly.

As the album plays, Sirius keeps his mouth shut, refraining from loosing his usual exaggerated huffs upon the room. In an armchair, Fleur writes a letter to her parents. Fleur corresponded with them and Gabrielle regularly while she was living in York. Since she’s moved, though, the onus is completely on her to keep the lines of communication open. The Death Eaters know Fleur fought with the Order at the Ministry, and sending her parents the address of headquarters would be folly. Besides, even if she wanted to, thanks to the Fidelius Charm, only Dumbledore can disclose the location. So Fleur writes them, alternating between her parents, her sister, and, less often, Viktor (who’s intimated he’s keeping an ear to the ground in Bulgaria) and waits for Remus’s owl, Aloysius, to bring back their replies.

Fleur can’t tell her family anything meaningful about what she’s up to, and they know that. Instead she tells them how much she loves them and how grateful she is for their understanding. She asks about their lives instead of revealing what she’s doing with hers. She does, however, tell them all about Tonks, though it’s tricky. She and Tonks haven’t really talked about their relationship. They certainly make no effort to conceal… whatever it is from the rest of the Order. They hold hands, they kiss, they have sex—though less often than they did in York, thanks to Tonks’s overtime and double shifts. Still, it pleases Fleur to tell them she’s met someone special—a woman. Her parents write back ‘how nice,’ while Gabrielle responds by telling her she thinks one of her dorm mates fancies her. Fleur didn’t expect any of them to lose it about Tonks, but she’s glad all the same that none of them are making it an issue.

She pens a letter to Gabrielle, then starts on one to her parents. She’s filling several lines with pleas to send real coffee by return owl when a sniff interrupts a nostalgic song about a couple of birds.

Fleur looks over at Tonks, who’s in pigeon pose on the floor, smirking at Sirius.

“Say nothing!” he commands, wiping away a tear. 

“It’s a moving song,” Remus says stoically, though Fleur can see he’s fighting a smile.

*

“We’ll be a big gay family soon,” Sirius says, baring his teeth in a smile. He’d slugged it out with Dumbledore back in June, but Dumbledore insisted Harry had to go back to Privet Drivet temporarily. “Won’t be long now and he’ll be bringing Harry here.”

“Dumbledore is getting Harry Himself?” Fleur feels guilty. Outside of school, Harry is without the protection of the Hogwarts wards, which is making her annoyed with her lack of progress on her assignment. She’s tried everything she could think up so far, along with a great number of things she’s sure wouldn’t work, but she hasn’t yet come up with a way of overcoming, bypassing, or otherwise navigating between two separate Fidelius charms. When Harry leaves the Dursleys, where he has unique protection, Fleur knows he’ll be at greater risk than ever. He’ll be safe at headquarters, of course. And ditto when he returns to Hogwarts. But he needs to travel from one place to another. Fleur doesn’t want to get complacent. She knows they’re at war—like Dumbledore, she can’t assume time is on her side.

“Says he needs to talk to Harry about something,” Sirius answers. “As if Harry won’t tell me the moment he arrives.”

*

As Harry’s arrival draws nearer, Sirius becomes commensurately more antsy. Over the last couple of weeks, Fleur’s discovered he’s a willing sounding board, often joining her in the library to talk through theoretical dilemmas she’s thinking though and potential spell mergers she’s toying with. But now she gives up trying to engage him in conversation. Even though Sirius is excited, he’s edgy and clearly nervous.

Fleur gets enough out of him during his Saturday afternoon pacing to learn that he and Harry haven’t spent much time together yet. They’ve had virtually no time to bond.

“Does he get along with Remus?” Fleur asks.

“He does. He knew Remus before I even met him. Remus taught him in his third year, taught him the Patronus Charm. Harry can cast a—” 

“Corporeal Patronus. A stag, like his father’s,” Fleur finishes.

Sirius doesn’t even look sheepish. Fleur’s not sure he knows how.

“I can’t help it if the lad’s got an aptitude.” Sirius looks as smug as he sounds.

Fleur doesn’t want to spoil the moment, but she’s also had something weighing on her mind since she found out Harry is coming. She’s excited to see him, can’t wait to hear how he is, but she’s also nervous. He’s not quite sixteen, and she’s not sure how he’ll respond to her and Tonks. It’s interesting. Fleur has never even uttered the words ‘I’m a lesbian’ out loud, and yet she now lives in a house where everyone knows it, where she’s not even the only queer person. 

“Harry knows about you and Remus?” Fleur asks. 

“Must do,” Sirius says. “We live together. We sent him a joint Christmas gift last year.”

“But you have not told him so?” Fleur presses.

“We didn’t tell you, did we? It’s sort of…” he pauses, “Obvious? I thought the benefit of being ‘obvious’ is that you don’t have to come out over and over again.”

Fleur hasn’t thought much about it, but she thinks back to her first dinner with the Order. Perhaps the fringe detriment of _not_ being ‘obvious’ is that you _do_ have to come out over and over again.

“You don’t need to worry about Harry,” Sirius assures her. “If you’re worried he fancies you and he’ll be mopey, all I can say is that practically all he talks about in his letters is what he and Ron are up to at school, or how horrible the summer is while they’re apart.”

*

Fleur keeps glancing at the clock. Five pm on the dot. She leaves her counter, collects her bag from the staff room and takes a deep breath before trying to Apparate home. She’d been up late the night before, plotting all manner of increasingly optimistic adjustments to the Apparition spell.

She goes nowhere. She closes her eyes and lets an angry breath out of her nose before heading to the Floo. 

In the kitchen, the first thing she hears is Sirius voice. “Back to the drawing board.”

“I will keep trying,” she vows. What she wants to do is stamp her feet or shriek, but the thought of doing something so petulant is embarrassing. Soon they’ll have teenagers in the house, and Fleur doesn’t want to feel like one of them.

*

_16 July 1996_

Sirius’s wired, anticipatory energy skyrockets further still when Harry actually arrives.

Fleur feels silly for worrying about Harry, for underestimating him again. Just like when they’d met two years prior, he exhibits no signs of attraction to her. And when Fleur determinedly refuses to change her behaviour with Tonks, rubbing a thumb over Tonks’s when she hands her a _proper_ coffee, courtesy of Maman, or kissing her goodbye on her way to work in the morning, Harry looks surprised at first, but takes it in stride. 

Over the summer, Ron and Ginny often join them at headquarters for Sunday suppers. Ron’s still a slobbering goof around Fleur, but less so the more time he spends in the house. When he’d arrived at headquarters the first time that summer, he’d barely tried it on with her. Since then he’s mostly kept to speaking with Fleur only as a part of a larger group and, even then, not making direct eye contact. If she’s brutally honest with herself, Fleur wonders if he and the others would be more affected by her if she were still as willowy as she was two years ago, when she’d been rejecting Yule Ball dates left, right, and centre, when this boy had found her so irresistible he’d asked her to the Yule Ball in front of a hallway full of his classmates. Simultaneously, though, it relieves her to know she won’t be fending off the advances of pocket gingers for the rest of the summer. What’s more, she finds in the coming weeks that she prefers Ron’s reduced interest to the embarrassed way he averts his eyes whenever Fleur and Tonks touch. In itself, it doesn’t bother her much, but it causes Molly to give them the evil eye, tut loudly, or request help from either her or Tonks in an attempt to put some distance between them.

Mostly, though, the days are as congenial as one could hope, considering outside bridges are collapsing, giants are having their way with rural localities, people are disappearing, and those inside the walls of Grimmauld Place represent the resistance movement against the would-be genocidal, fascistic dictator orchestrating it all.

When Tonks and Fleur head to their respective workplaces, Sirius and Harry stay at Grimmauld Place. If Remus is home from his missions with the werewolves, he joins them. Fleur is happy for the three of them, especially for Harry. She thinks it’s probably the best family time he’s had since he lost his parents. When Fleur comes home in the evenings, she heads to her desk in the library, trying to let the three of them be.

*

_31 July 1996_

Fleur tries to force herself into cheeriness before she steps into one of the Gringotts employee Floos. She supposes that, subconsciously, she thought she’d have got somewhere—anywhere—with her assignment by now. It’s been almost six weeks. Sure, it’s a big ask, but she hasn’t even been able to achieve Apparition from an unwarded place outside into Grimmauld Place yet. She has no idea how she’ll achieve moving from behind one Fidelius into another. But it’s Harry’s birthday, and Fleur doesn’t want to spoil the festive spirit he and Sirius have managed to eke out for themselves. And anyway, she’ll need to get herself into a good headspace in order to spend the evening with Molly. 

When Fleur arrives in Grimmauld’s kitchen, Molly has laid out a huge spread. The usual Weasleys are here, plus Remus, Sirius, Mad-Eye, and Mundungus. Tonks and Kingsley are working. 

Together, the Order, Harry, and the Weasley children share a large meal. The worst thing about Molly’s cooking is the early hour. Eating at 5:30pm just isn’t natural, but the English don’t seem concerned. Soon their plates of seconds and thirds are clean, and people disperse themselves around the kitchen. Molly turns on the wireless and the ghastly sounds of magical crooning comes forth. Fleur heads to the hearth to chat with Bill and Remus.

“Before you complain, Fleur,” Bill says, “consider that I’ve been forced to listen to the likes of Celestina Warbeck and Stubby Boardman since I was an infant.” 

“No wonder you moved to Egypt.” Remus beats Fleur to the obvious joke.

They share a smirk, and Fleur’s eyes flick across the room to where Sirius is sat with Harry, Ron, and Mad-Eye at the table. She and Sirius share a meaningful look of despair over the music and Sirius gives her a little nod that tells her he’s got a plan.

They suffer through the crooning for another forty-five minutes or so, after which Sirius vanishes upstairs. Before long, he bellows from the top of the staircase, over the music and the chatter, that everyone should come up, then retreats to silence the portrait of his mother he’s woken, who’s shrieking about the unnatural scum who’ve infested her home.

Harry answers the summons straight away, with Ron in tow, and Fleur’s not far behind them. Together they file up, and Sirius ushers them into the sitting room, where he’s got a record player on the coffee table and a Muggle banker’s box filled with records on the floor. 

“First pick’s yours, Harry,” Sirius says, gesturing to the box. “It’s your birthday, after all.” After a brief pause, he adds, “But nothing depressing. This is a party.”

Harry laughs nervously and looks in the box. His hands flick through the albums hesitantly, as though he’s not practiced in the motion. Fleur supposes records are getting dated. After a minute, Harry looks up from the box to Sirius, and asks, “What did my dad like?” Sirius shares a sad smile with his godson. He kneels down beside him and looks through the collection. “Let’s see. These are mostly mine, so there’s nothing new here—you’d have to beg newer stuff off Remus or Tonks.” While the two of them look through the collection, the rest of the room respectfully start chatting again. Finally, Sirius whoops and moves to put an album on the turntable. “Your dad loved David Bowie, Harry.” 

Remus has shuffled over to Fleur, and mumbles, “You wait. If we make it through the night without hearing ABBA’s Greatest Hits from beginning to end at least three times, I’ll make the coffee for the next month.”

“What have you got against ABBA?” Fleur demands. 

“Not a thing. I’m just preparing you. It’s not a party until Sirius belts out Nina, Pretty Ballerina.”

Harry grabs a seat in an armchair, looking eager to have a listen. Molly, Arthur, and Mad-Eye finally enter the room. Mad-Eye takes in the scene and bids them goodnight.

“Mad-Eye is allergic to a good time,” Sirius remarks, dropping the needle. 

Long after midnight, Mundungus has left and Molly and Arthur have retired for the night, agreeing to let Ron and Ginny stay over. The rest of them enjoy drinks and conversation and music in the sitting room. Tonks finally returns with Kingsley while Fleur and Sirius are dancing to ABBA and everyone else is lounging, though some with tapping feet.

“Just in time,” Sirius calls, shoving Fleur towards Tonks and pulling Remus up off the sofa as the song changes.

Fleur stumbles towards Tonks, propelled by the force of Sirius’s enthusiastic shove. “That was for his benefit,” Fleur remarks, as Tonks takes her in her arms. “He just wanted to dance with Remus again.”

Tonks looks dead tired, but she laughs. “I’m glad to be home.” She kisses Fleur and begins swaying with her. Together, they bounce their shoulders, hips, and knees back and forth without any synchronicity. Fleur puts her hands on Tonks’s hips and sings “Honey, Honey” off-key in her face.

“Ha!” Sirius says gleefully, when Kingsley reports that Fudge has officially had it.

“Wizengamot are instating a War Measures Act,” Kingsley says. “They’re meeting now to choose Fudge’s successor. I can’t stay. I need to get back to the Prime Minister.”

“I wish I could have seen Fudge’s face when he was sacked,” Harry crows.

“A thing of beauty,” Kingsley assures him before leaving through the kitchen hearth. “Happy Birthday, Harry.”

*

_September 1996_

When Harry leaves for school, Sirius is less exuberant. After months spent, if not _parenting_ , certainly caring for Harry for the first time since he was robbed of his rightful opportunity, something has shifted in him. He’s not a changed man by any means—he doesn’t stop pouting when it’s Tonks’s turn to pick the music or whinging lyrically about his inability to leave the house. When he finds out Tonks and Kingsley will be doing shifts at Hogwarts, he rues the unfairness at length. 

But he does, in action if not in word, pledge himself to Fleur’s work. It’s remarkable to see someone whose primarily character trait is superiority become an eager research assistant and sounding board. It seems having had Harry so close, having been able to get to know him for the first time, and not just lament missing the concept of him, all after nearly losing his life in the Ministry, has made Sirius realise how important it is that he survives—to be there for Harry. He can’t follow Remus to spy amongst the werewolves. He can’t sign up for the Aurors like Kingsley and Tonks. He can’t teach at Hogwarts. He can’t even leave headquarters; Scrimgeour is proving as recalcitrant as Fudge where Sirius’s innocence is concerned. Convinced the public wouldn’t hear of having Sirius exonerated in this climate of fear, Scrimgeour's been needling Dumbledore for his whereabouts, and it’s as important as ever that he stays in hiding. So he does. When he tires of brooding about Harry, he complains about Remus’s absences and the the greasiness, snivelly-nosed existence of Snape, whose crimes against Sirius, Fleur learns when she is foolish enough to ask, seem largely to be ugliness and a poor hair care regimen. Fleur doesn’t much mind, though. For one, she can’t imagine going through what Sirius has. For another, she’s not above laughing at his rants. And, of course, he’s helping her. He doesn’t have to. She appreciates it, appreciates him, his brain and his humour, more and more each day.

Fleur, on the other hand, can come and go as she pleases, but mostly she doesn’t. She comes home after work each day with a packet of cash—she’s been instructed to turn as much of the Black vault as possible into Muggle currency in the event they can no longer access Gringotts—and dives into her assignment. Though she’s gone from nine to five each weekday, she’s by far Sirius’s most frequent companion. They work together in the library. Fleur calculates, reads, recalculates. She feels useless and starts over. She knows it’s just a matter of finding the right key to the door facing her. She just wishes, impatiently, that she could force the lock.

*

_December 1996_

At the large wooden desk in the library, Fleur tips her head backwards dramatically. 

“Hang in there,” Sirius calls from where he’s sat behind a book in the bay window across the room. “No need for a strop.” 

Fleur raises her head once more. “You are not even looking at me. How do you know if I am about to have a strop or not?”

He drops his book and waves a dismissive hand.

“There are just too many variables,” Fleur laments for the millionth time. “If it were a matter—”

“I know,” Sirius barks impatiently. She can’t blame him. She’s impatient too. With this mission, with herself. Maybe if she had made even the smallest amount of progress, had succeeded in anything, even a half measure…

“Look, we’ll find a way. We just have to keep looking for ways to force—”

“No.” Fleur’s brain feels overused, but also like she can’t shut it off. “Trying to force our way through or sneak between the wards has got us nowhere. We need to try something else.”

“We’re not giving up.” Sirius sounds ready for a fight. 

“I would never give up on this,” Fleur assures him.

“Then what—”

“Tais-toi,” Fleur instructs. 

“Wha—”

“I mean it—I am trying to have an epiphany.” 

Sirius snickers and mutters “As you wish, Madame Curie,” but remains otherwise silent, and she’s grateful, even if he’s not taking her seriously.

After what feels like a couple of minutes, Fleur finally speaks up.

“It is too complicated, dealing with two sets of wards, two Fideliuses, two different Secret Keepers—there are too many variables.”

“We’ve always known that.”

“Yes, but we were trying to find a way to bypass it all. We will never achieve it. We need to do this bit by bit. Start with Apparating out of a Fideliused house, or Apparating into one, before we have any chance of going from one to the next.”

Sirius pushes himself up from the bay window and strides over. “You’re right.”

“It was foolish to approach this as one task.” 

“Elvis is always right,” Sirius says.

Fleur ignores him. “We must navigate at least three steps, so we need a denominator common to all three.”

“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves again. If you want to take this one step at a time, first we need to figure out how to Apparate out the wards here, including the Fidelius.”

“The wards will be the easy part. There is always a way around or through regular wards. The Fidelius is the real problem. It uses complex protective magic to remove a place from normal space, without actually removing it. In effect, the existence of the house depends on whether one knows the precise location or not.”

“Schrodinger's house,” Sirius says.

“Focus!” Fleur smacks her hands together loudly right in front of Sirius’s nose. “Banter later.”

“Fine. I guess... Okay, but since we already know the location, it makes the most sense to try Apparating out first. If we can achieve that, it can be our jumping off point to figuring out how to get in, which will leave us only with bypassing the regular wards.”

“We must find a way to move through or around them without bringing them down and making the house vulnerable.”

“That’ll take some finessing,” Sirius says, voice quieter than usual.

“You love this,” Fleur observes.

“Breaking out of my father’s wards? What red-blooded pureblood lad wouldn’t?”

*

Apparating out of Grimmauld isn’t the breeze they hoped. After three weeks, they haven’t managed it. Instead of trying to break out with sheer force, they shift their focus temporarily to running a battery of diagnostic spells on the Grimmauld wards.

“There are two distinct strains of magic, those with your father’s signature and those with Dumbledore’s,” Fleur says one evening after getting home, making a pitstop in the kitchen where Kreacher supplies her with a pasty, and setting herself up in her second workstation, the Grimmauld library.

“Easy enough to tell apart, too,” Sirius spits out. “The wards my father cast are blacker than my mother’s dessicated heart.”

“In this case, we are fortunate. Those wards are essentially intended to keep people out. They should not post an insurmountable barrier to leaving. Dumbledore’s wards are a bigger problem, especially the Fidelius—they are intended to protect what is inside.”

“And didn’t require any blood sacrifices.” 

“So,” Fleur continues. Sirius’s family resentment isn’t misplaced, but she’s on a roll and she can’t let herself be derailed. “We have to convince those wards that when we leave, we do so under protection.”

The puzzle seems to distract Sirius. For a few minutes, neither of them say anything. 

Fleur’s mind suddenly shines as though someone cast a Lumos inside it. “We are idiots. We are thinking of the Fidelius as a spell, but at its core it is a vow of protection. We can use the first Fidelius as a promise to the second. The Apparator, not the spell, is the common denominator.”

“If a person can disappear in one spot and magic can move them to another—”

“Then magic should be able to close the space between two spatially disparate points so that the Apparator does not actually move, but the two places temporarily share space so that the Apparator can be… I am not sure how to express it, deposited? in the second location while they are still under the protection of the first. Then both locations can snap back—”

“What about the other wards?”

“Regular wards are tied to the dwelling; Fidelius compromises the spatial existence of the dwelling. Regular wards can always be broken anyway. If not by us, then, eventually, by our enemies.”

“So you’re saying…”

“We drop the rest of the wards and rely on Fidelius—on the vow of the Secret Keeper.”

Sirius nods. “That’ll be a tough sell to some of our members. Mad-Eye comes to mind...”

“We have to trust one another. We could, perhaps, develop a universal ward-breaking spell, but that will take time, and if our theory is correct about the Fidelius—”

“Constructing that spell alone will be time consuming,” Sirius finishes her train of thought. “We don’t have the time. This won’t be a matter of altering the Apparition spell like we thought.”

“No.” They are making something new here, crafting an entirely new spell, and one that will demand considerable magical precision to carry off.

“Harry will be here soon for Christmas,” Sirius says.

“I can keep working. You and Harry should—”

“This is important,” Sirius acknowledges bitterly. He’s like a dog with a bone, determined to see this thing through. If he’s anything like her, thinking through all the possibilities keeps him up at night. Some nights Fleur feels like the helpless host of a brain that just won’t stop working. Not that she has better nighttime offers lately. Tonks is so often working. 

“I’ll write to Molly,” Sirius says finally. “Invite Ron and Ginny. Harry can invite Hermione too. Though from his letters, it sounds like Ron and Hermione aren’t getting along.” He shrugs. “Whatever. I’ll still find time to spend with him.”

*

_June 1997_

Fleur is in the kitchen at Bill’s cottage. He’s on Order duty at Hogwarts, and his house is under a Fidelius, but Fleur is his Secret Keeper. She told him she needed use of his place and he didn’t even ask what for. The clock strikes eight o’clock. Fleur takes a deep breath and closes her eyes, bracing herself for disappointment. They’ve worked so hard, and she’s confident in her calculations, in her understanding of the underlying theory, and in Sirius’s smug knowledge of ritual magic. (Apparently he, Lily Evans, Marlene McKinnon, and Dorcas Meadows had gone through a wicca phase together, for which Remus and James had mocked them all—“I only wish James were around so I could crow in his face.”) It’s amazing how many moving magical parts they’ve had to bring together. Then again, if even one is askew… No point thinking about that now. She shuts her eyes and whispers the invocation she and Sirius decided upon. That was one of their biggest breakthroughs—realising what they needed wasn’t an incantation, to make something happen, but instead to invoke the magical trust already manifest in the Secret Keepers, and, through them, the protection of both Fidelius charms. It’s inherently wandless, not even a spell, in the conventional sense. 

“In perfect love and perfect trust,” Fleur whispers, thinking about herself and Dumbledore, the two pertinent Secret Keepers here, and letting her chest fill with certainty in their care for their comrades. There’s only one other thing to do. She takes one step forward, a ritual action, across an invisible threshold.

There is no _Crack_!, no Whoosh!

Instead, Fleur hears, “AAAAAaaaaaa!!! Yes!” Sirius whoops across the room. He rushes over to Fleur and jumps into her arms, legs wrapping themselves over her hips to keep him in place. “You did it!” His grin is so wide, so satisfied.

“We did it,” Fleur amends. 

“I wish Remus and Tonks were here,” Sirius grumbles, dismounting. The grumble sounds odd through his still-jubilant tone. “Something like this needs celebrating.”

Fleur still can’t believe it—there is something to celebrate. She, with her friend, has _done_ something celebration-worthy. The glow of it in her chest feels as bright as sunlight.

“You should send Patronuses to Bill, Tonks, and Kingsley at work, tell them to come straight over here with some ouzo when they’ve finished. I wish Dumbledore hadn’t called Remus away.” 

“The cellar is full of liquor,” Fleur observes.

“Yes, but not ouzo. My parents had no spirit of fun whatsoever. This is huge, Fleur. An accomplishment like this—it deserves to have a few of the Order’s finest lose a couple of days to it.”

 _The Order’s finest_. Fleur smiles. “And the frivolous use of Patronuses?”

They send only one Patronus, to Dumbledore. After that, they get shitfaced on whisky and take it in turns to congratulate themselves and regret the absence of their lovers and friends to tell them how brilliant they are.

“It’s better this way,” Sirius says, mining the silver lining. “Draw out the celebration. Tonight, whisky; tomorrow, ouzo.”

Fleur’s laughter is well lubricated. The two of them toast one another into the night, pausing more and more often, though, to remark on the oddness of hearing from no one. Slowly, they stop drinking for fun and start drinking to ease the worry. 

Ambient light is coming through the windows by the time the door is opened and just as quickly slammed again.

“Fleur?!” Tonks bellows, waking Mrs Black. “Sirius?! FLEUR!”

“We are here,” Fleur tries to call back over the screeches from the foyer, beating Sirius off of the sofa by mere seconds as she rushes to the hall. “What is it?” She gasps and rushes towards Tonks when she sees her. “What happened to you?!”

Tonks looks horrible. Parts of her arms are visible and bleeding through slashes in her robes, which are a write off. Her face is worse. Nevermind the bruises; her eyes are swollen, still shedding tears, and there’s snot running from her nose. Fleur steps towards her and rubs the tears and snot away with a sleeve, taking Tonks into her arms. The shrieking in the background continues.

“Not Harry,” Sirius rasps, ignoring his mother’s portrait.

“No,” Tonks says, immediately, Sirius’s worry cutting through her rattled state.

“Who? Not Remus,” Sirius chokes out.

“Half-breeds! Unnatural—”

“We couldn’t stop—” Tonks calls over the vitriol.

“Who?” Fleur repeats. 

Tonks bursts into fresh sobs, and Fleur does her best to hold her upright, feeling her own cheek, neck, and shirt moisten with Tonk’s tears. 

“It’s Dumbledore,” Tonks finally manages. “He’s gone. Snape—”

“SNAPE!” Sirius bellows, reinvigorating Mrs Black.

Tonks pulls of free of Fleur’s embrace and looks to be steeling herself. “Look,” she says. “Get your shit, and Remus’s. Essentials only. You too, Fleur. We have to get the fuck out of here. Snape’s a traitor—” She holds up a hand to halt Sirius. “—We can curse his name later. Dumbledore is gone. This place isn’t safe anymore. I want us out of here in five minutes or less.”

Three minutes later, they’ve reconvened by the front door, valises shrunken in their pockets. Tonks is taking no chances. She’s glamoured Sirius and Fleur to the hilt and completely changed her own appearance to that of a nondescript, mousy-haired woman. “It’s hard to get a glamour to stick to you,” Tonks complains, casting and recasting at Fleur. “Especially your hair. Whatever, it’ll have to do. I’m not sure it will hold up to anyone who knows who you are. Now,” Her tone is all professional, deadly serious, instructing, “in a moment, we’re going to step out onto the top stair, and from there I am going to Apparate the three of us the fuck out of here—”

“Rem—”

“He knows where to meet us. I do not want to spend more than one fucking second on that stair, do you hear me?”

They both nod in acknowledgement. Fleur has never seen Tonks like this. Sure, they fought together in the Department of Mysteries, but this is different. Then they’d been duelling for their lives, in a state of adrenaline-fueled, nearly mindless reaction. Now, though, Fleur feels like she’s seeing Tonks as an Auror for the first time. She’s grieving and a horrible mess, evidently completely fucked up about whatever happened last night. Yet she possesses a certain clarity. Though the evidence of her emotions is written all over her face, she’s apparently still able to do what needs doing to get the three of them to safety.

“I am going to open this door now. We go out single file, one directly after the other. Fleur, hold onto my hand and take Sirius’s with your other hand.” Fleur does as instructed without hesitation. “Sirius, you’ll come out last and close the door, and when I hear that sound, I am going to Apparate us away. Do you understand?”

“Yes,” they say in unison. 

“Good. Let’s get the fuck out of here.” Tonks opens the door, and in a flash, Fleur leaves another home behind.


	4. Chapter 4

A _Crack_! sounds as they land on grass, still dewy this early in the morning. 

“Dora? Is that you?” a voice calls out from the front door of a house a few yards away. “ _Lumos_.” Tonks pushes them towards the light. 

A second figure joins the first at the door. “Nymphadora!” she wails, rushing towards them.

“Who’s Nymphadora?” Fleur asks, an instant before Tonks calls to the figure at the door, “Yes, it’s me, Mum. With Fleur and Sirius. Is Remus here? Bill?”

“You’re the first,” Tonks’s dad informs them.

“I’ve been out of my mind with worry.” Tonks’s mother seizes her, pulling her out of Fleur’s grasp and hugging her in an anxious, white-knuckled grip. She holds Tonks for several moments, while Tonks’s father comes down the stairs and joins them. He puts his arms around them both.

After an intimate moment, Tonks’s parents release her, giving Fleur and Sirius their attention for the first time. “Sirius,” Tonks’s mother’s whispers. She sounds disbelieving. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know. I had no idea until Dora arrived here this morning and told us—”

“None of that, Andromeda. Seems we’ll have plenty of time to catch up.”

“Yes,” she whispers again, then moves in for a hug. 

Sirius embraces her. “It’s good to see you. You must be Ted. I’m sorry we never met. I was still living at home, when you got hitched, and then—”

“I’m pleased to meet you,” Ted says, shaking SIrius’s hand before turning to Fleur. 

“This is Fleur.” Tonks gestures to her by way of introduction. “Fleur, these are my parents, Ted and Andromeda.”

Fleur feels a bit uncomfortable, but decides to assume the vague introduction is related to the circumstances in which it was made. She shakes Ted’s hand, then Andromeda’s, before they lead the new arrivals into the house.

Fleur takes Tonks’s hand again, and hangs back a moment behind the others. “Nymphadora?” she inquires with a mixture of disbelief and amusement.

“I’d take a glance around your glass house before you throw that stone, Flower.”

*

Inside, Andromeda begins talking about room arrangements. “Fleur, you’ll have to stay with Dora. We’ve only got three bedrooms.” Fleur’s shoulders tighten up. Her impulse to correct Andromeda clashes with her knowing that it’s not her place to reveal anything Tonks hasn’t already told her parents. Added to that conflict is her desire to round on Tonks and ask her why her parents don’t know.

“That’s perfect, Mum.” Tonks blushes slightly. “Fleur and I are used to sharing a bed.”

Ted looks at Fleur again, and gives her a smile. 

“I see,” Andromeda says, also smiling at Fleur, but forcedly. “I’m sorry. You didn’t tell me you were seeing anyone.”

“Now I have,” Tonks says simply.

Under a cloud of awkwardness, they head upstairs where all three bedrooms are. Tonks’s is covered in posters—Patti Smith, Adam and the Ants, and the Smiths stare at Fleur as she pulls their tiny valises from her pockets and places them on the bed.

“Sirius,” Andromeda says, “You and Remus will be in the guest room. It’s at the end of the hall.”

“Thanks, Andromeda. I wish he’d get here.”

Before long, Remus does, and he and Tonks recount the whole, horrible story. It’s so much worse than Fleur could have imagined. Dumbledore is dead. Death Eaters were at Hogwarts. No one knows exactly what will happen to Bill—only the next moon will tell, Remus says. Harry saw Dumbledore die and is undoubtedly traumatised for life. Students were fighting. Snape, whom Fleur has only seen at Order meetings and has never spoken to one-on-one, is a despicable traitor and cold-blooded killer.

“I’ve got to get to Hogwarts now!” Sirius insists. “Harry—”

“Will be far worse off if you get yourself arrested. The place is crawling with Aurors. They’d love to arrest you right now—a nice triumph they could take to the _Prophet_.” Tonks’s voice is sarcastic and lacking its usual vim.

“But he must be—”

“He’s safe at Hogwarts. The Death Eaters fled. They wouldn’t have done if they thought there was any chance they could take the castle.”

Fleur is sat next to Sirius and Remus on the sofa. She puts a friendly hand on Sirius’s knee. He looks at her and smiles grimly. She takes it back after a moment and clasps it in her lap with her other one.

“The first thing we need to do is get this place under a Fidelius. If we’re all going to be living here, perhaps Bill, or Kingsley?” Sirius says.

“I am Bill’s Secret Keeper,” Fleur reminds them. Andromeda looks surprised. “He’ll return the favour.”

“He may be convalescing for some time.” Remus sounds regretful, as though it’s his fault. 

“Kingsley’ll do it,” Tonks says, voice hard as diamond. “He’ll be happy to help us. And his house should be Fideliused too; I can do the same for him. I want to. We all need to be under Fidelius now. Without—” Her words come out thickly. “Without—” 

Fleur gets up and sits on the arm of Tonks’s upholstered chair. She’s not sure it’s a good idea, but she offers her hand. Tonks looks at her, eyes shining again, and takes it, holding tight. Fleur thinks it’s odd to find anything consoling right now. The others continue talking for a few minutes. Fleur is determined not to force comfort on Tonks. Fleur just sits next to her, steadfast, holding her hand. It’s odd: less than fifteen minutes after receiving news that their leader has fallen—murdered by a trusted comrade!—Fleur is overwhelmed. And not just with grief, but with a conflicting mix of emotions. Along with grief, admiration for Tonks and Remus, who fought to protect Harry and the other students, who saw their friend horribly maimed, who had the presence of mind to form a preliminary plan, mingles with resentment towards Tonks for not telling her parents about Fleur. In spite of her personal feelings of hurt with regards to the latter, she’s staggered by the former. And it’s not just because she knows Tonks cares—Tonks cares for everyone. _That’s _the thick of it. Tonks loves everyone, is determined to do her best by all of her loved ones, even by strangers.__

__Someone says Harry’s name, and it derails Fleur’s train(wreck) of thought._ _

__“—he needs to go back to Privet Drive, even briefly. Sirius, don’t argue. Dumbledore was always adamant about this.”_ _

__“Have you heard Harry talk about those people? If you can even call them people.”_ _

__“I have. Which is why we need to come up with a plan to get him out as quickly as possible. And we’re running low on room here, so we’ll need to consider the Burrow or Bill’s,” Remus suggests._ _

__“I don’t want him out of my sight!” Sirius shouts._ _

__Andromeda speaks for the first time in a while. “We’ll sort something out, Sirius.”_ _

__“We can move him,” Fleur tells them all. “Sirius and I succeeded today.” Twelve hours ago, Sirius was enthused about ouzo. She herself was excited to share news of their triumph. Now she offers it up with no pomp or circumstance, just another weapon in their arsenal._ _

____

*

Dumbledore is buried. Fleur attends the funeral, along with the others, save Sirius. She sees Harry, who’s clearly wavering in and out of shock, grief, and guilt. Fleur can’t blame him. He was there—saw Dumbledore killed with his own eyes. Sirius hasn’t stopped raging since he found out Dumbledore had taken Harry from Hogwarts without his knowledge, furious about Harry being put at risk. Fleur and Tonks had shared a heavy look—amazing how someone could be so cavalier about his own safety and so desperate about another’s.

After the funeral, Harry asks Remus for a word, and they disappear. They wander off along the grounds, away from the crowd of mourners (real and phoney). Fleur and Tonks head to the hospital wing to visit Bill. 

As term comes to a close, the Order decides what to do with Harry. Since Dumbledore’s funeral, Sirius is more insistent than ever about keeping Harry with him, and Remus agrees. But no one knows exactly what kind of protection Lily invoked with her dying act, so they have to be prudent. Sirius, the most knowledgeable about ye olde protective rituals, and Remus, with his knowledge of practical defense, grudgingly admit that ensuring Lily’s protection remains in place could take anywhere from a day to a full lunar cycle, so they have to err on the side of caution.

No one is happy about it. Fleur imagines Harry is the least pleased of all.

While they wait for twenty-eight days to elapse, Azkaban sees another mass breakout, Death Eaters swelling their master’s ranks. When they do, _The Daily Prophet_ ’s reports of killings and Dark Marks and suspicious incidents increase five-fold. Every day, when Tonks goes to work, Fleur’s anxiety increases. She can’t even make her promise to be careful, because she knows Tonks can’t, not really; it’s her job to put herself between these catastrophes and their perpetrators. 

Thanks to Fleur and Sirius’s work, they’ve become the Order’s foremost experts on Fidelius, and lead the charge of ensuring all Order homes are protected. McGonagall is safe at Hogwarts, and Mad-Eye’s been living under a Fidelius since entering the Auror academy, though no one knows who his Secret Keeper is. The rest, though, need protection. Fleur prioritises the Weasleys, because they want to host Harry’s seventeenth birthday, but Molly Weasley stalwartly refuses to go under Fidelius in case Percy tries to come, insisting their wards will hold. Fleur and Sirius argue the point with her until they are blue in the face, but without her consent, they can’t cast a Fidelius Charm over her home. They don’t drop the issue, but they do Kingsley’s house first, because he’s Tonks’s partner and a quality human. Dedalus and Hestia will be taking off with Harry’s family, leaving their homes in Britain behind. Which only leaves Mundungus, who doesn’t seem to have a permanent address. All things considered, their biggest job is ensuring the all the Order members, now busier than ever, are taught the new spell. Fleur and Sirius had months to come to a slow and steady understanding of how it works. The others just have to trust them despite how unorthodox and, frankly, impossible, it sounds. But with Dumbledore gone, with Voldemort at large, all they have to keep them alive now, aside from their own wits, is mutual trust.

*

_27 July 1997_

The day comes to collect Harry. Fleur, Sirius, and Remus (Tonks and Kingsley are so overworked they barely have time to sleep these days) arrive at Number 4 Privet Drive with Hestia and Dedalus. They don’t get through the goodbyes without furious shouting on the parts of Sirius and Remus, who make it a team effort to give Harry’s aunt and uncle what’s for. Just as Sirius is launching into a fresh tangent about how Petunia never liked James Potter and Remus is fixing to draw his wand, Fleur, Hestia, and Dedalus intervene, reminding them both that hexing Muggles is exactly the kind of thing they’re fighting against. But neither of them stands down until Harry asks them to, calling them off with a simple, “It’s fine, just leave it so we can get out of here.” 

After that, the four of them are alone in the house.

“You know how to Apparate already, Harry?” Remus seeks confirmation.

“Yes,” Harry says, then looks sick. “I’ve done it, but I don’t have a license.”

“Breaking the law—like godfather like godson.” Sirius tries to lighten the mood in the spookily clean kitchen.

Together with Harry, Fleur and Sirius cast the Fidelius they need in order to use their invocation. Lily’s protection is fundamentally centred upon Harry, and so shouldn’t interfere with it. Sirius acts as Harry’s Secret Keeper, and Fleur casts the spell to bring them together in an act of pure protection. As Sirius and Harry face one another for the incantation, Fleur has never seen either of them look more proud, trusting, or resolved.

“We will teach you a new way to move between houses under Fidelius,” Fleur tells Harry once the Fidelius is in place and she and Sirius have dropped the other wards. “It temporarily alters space; we call it Moving House. It is not Ministry approved,” Fleur explains. It seems to be Harry approved, though; he just asks them what he needs to do. He’s no slower or faster at learning than the rest of the Order. Magic this dependent on emotions is always tricky to master. But after a few hours, he’s got it. He’s impatient with himself. He clearly wants to get it right away, to prove himself or to get out of this house, Fleur doesn’t know. She guesses both. She cannot blame him.

Finally, he masters the spell and the four of them step, hand-in-hand, into Shell Cottage, where Remus, Sirius, and Harry are staying together while Bill convalesces at the Burrow.

*

_31 July 1997_

Molly levitates a huge Snitch cake outside to oohs and ahhs from her family and the gathered Order members. 

The Burrow still isn’t under a Fidelius. Harry, Molly, and Sirius had a spectacular row about it a few days before, during which Sirius called Molly deluded for planning a party for his godson’s coming of age that he couldn’t attend, Molly insisted that Sirius was selfishly trying to keep Harry cooped up with him while the rest of his friends were able to celebrate, and Harry reminded them both that: a) he was turning seventeen and would decide himself whether or not to go, and b) Sirius wasn’t another friend, he was his family. Visibly gleeful, Sirius put his foot down and said if Harry went, so did he. Remus had tutted, but apparently knew a losing fight when he heard it. Harry looked equal parts worried and chuffed about it. 

Bill’s here, too, in his mother’s care until he can manage on his own. Every one of them is fucked up about what happened in June, but today they have come together, as if by doing so they can conjure cheer. And, to their credit, they do. They are battered, but not defeated.

“That’s spectacular, Molly!” Tonks praises, tripping over a tuft of crab grass as she moves towards the table for a closer look. 

Molly looks weary, as though concerned Tonks will spoil it somehow. “Why don’t you relax, Tonks, dear? I’ll serve.”

Outside the Burrow, they eat cake and laugh and catch up, avoiding talk of Dumbledore for the night. As the afternoon goes on, Sirius calls for a toast to Harry, and Kingsley follows it by raising a glass to the Order. 

“Fighting the good fight!” Tonks adds. But she and Kingsley are toasting with butterbeers, and shortly after, head in for their second shifts of the day, letting the party continue without them. The rest of them carry on throughout the afternoon, snacking and milling around. The jovial sounds are silenced suddenly when Molly calls out, “Percy!”

Fleur turns to see someone who looks like the twins, accompanied by a man she knows from _The Daily Prophet_ to be the Minister for Magic, walking towards them. Percy looks both shifty and snobby, but Scrimgeour puts on a show of nonchalance. Panic sets in. This man will take Sirius if he can, and every person here will fight for him, and then they’ll all be doubly fucked. Fleur looks around for Sirius, and can’t find him. Did he see Scrimgeour approaching? Did he manage to get away? Her eyes find Remus, who’s a little ways away, next to Bill, projecting an image of nonchalance. Fleur tries to get his attention by sheer force of will, but it doesn’t work, so she excuses herself and heads to the house where she finds Sirius exiting the lavatory.

“Sirius, you have to go! Now!” she urges. “Scrimgeour is outside.”

Sirius pales and nods. He’s reckless, not stupid. Without a word, he leaves through the back door to avoid the party. Fleur hears the quietest of _Cracks_! In the distance and relief floods her. She cannot believe their luck, after such a stretch of bad fortune.

As she heads back outside, she sees Harry, Ron, Hermione, and Scrimgeour coming in. Scrimgeour seems distracted by her presence for a moment, but re-focusses on whatever his purpose is. 

Outside, everyone does their best to keep the light atmosphere afloat, but with Percy there, it’s difficult. It couldn’t be clearer he wants nothing better than to leave. It’s sad to watch Molly dote on him, trying to get him to eat some cake while Arthur and the others look on resentfully.

Soon, though, Scrimgeour storms out of the Burrow in high dudgeon, and Percy hurries to follow him off. Harry, Ron, and Hermione emerge after, telling them about Dumbledore’s strange bequests. Fleur finds a seat by Remus and tells him Sirius got away clear. They consider going to get him, but the intrusion forces them to reckon with how risky it was to have him here at all. With the war now in the open, with the danger constant, everywhere, they’ve become paradoxically complacent. 

For a couple of hours, they alternate between speculation about the purpose of Dumbledore’s gifts and casting aspersions on Scrimgeour and Percy. It’s dark outside, and under the colourful lanterns Fred and George try to cheer Molly up while Bill warns them to lay off. Fleur admires Harry’s Snitch while Remus inspects Ron’s Deluminator. Remus is just returning a light from its hiding place back to its lantern with an admiring “fascinating,” when another light, not from the Deluminator, not from a Lumos, moves towards them. It’s moving at speed, but when it jumps onto the table, Fleur can see it’s Kingsley’s lynx. In Kingsley’s voice, it says: "The Ministry has fallen. Scrimgeour is dead. They are coming. We are safe." Fleur is certain “we” includes Tonks. She has no choice but to take heart in that. 

There’s no time to feel guilty about spending the last few hours speaking ill of a man now dead. Remus stands the moment the lynx has spoken and calls for calm. Arthur orders his children into the house. Bill, Fred, and George ignore him, running alongside the other adults towards the edges of the wards to defend the Burrow. Fleur can hear Molly ordering Ron and Ginny into the house. “Ron? Ron!? Where’s Ron? Harry? Hermione?” Molly wails.

The panic Fleur felt at Scrimgeour’s arrival is nothing to this. She wants to go and find out what Molly is shrieking about—it sounds horribly as though she can’t find Harry. But Fleur knows she can’t. Harry might be missing, or he might not be, but if they don’t defend the Burrow, he’ll be in harm’s way for sure. It was absolute folly to let Molly have her way about the Fidelius Charm.

*

“FUCK!” A vase explodes on the windowsill near where Sirius is standing.

“ _Sirius_!” Tonks shouts, dodging shards of porcelain before casting, ” _Reparo_!” 

“We know they didn’t take him,” Fleur says.

“The Death Eaters didn’t breach the wards,’” Remus agrees.

“We have to assume he fled,” Tonks reasons. “What I can’t figure out is why. He’s always been so adamant about being part of the Order, about fighting. He and his friends flew a pack of Thestrals from Hogwarts to London, for fuck’s sake.”

“Didn’t he just turn seventeen?” Andromeda asks. “He got scared and took off. Teenagers do stupid things.”

“They do at that,” Ted agrees.

“The why is moot right now.” Remus directs the conversation away from what Fleur thinks is an entirely pertinent discussion of motive. “The real question is where would he go?”

“Hermione’s?” Tonks suggests. “She’s one of his best friends,” she adds for Andromeda and Ted’s benefit.

“Where do the Grangers live?” Sirius asks.

“Penzance,” Tonks answers, rattling off their home address without skipping a beat.

“How do you know that?” Remus looks impressed.

“She’s a professional investigator.” _Honestly_ , Fleur thinks.

“Well, I’m going right now. That’s a start.” Sirius heads for the door, but Andromeda grabs him by the arm in a grip that looks bruising, as Remus says, “Not without me.”

“Don’t be asinine, Sirius.” Andromeda’s still holding his arm in a vice grip. “You’re about as wanted as it gets.”

“By a government that’s gone, Andromeda.”

“He’s right,” Fleur admits. “Things are ten times more dangerous now, and Harry is out there in it. I will come.”

“And me,” says Tonks.

“Absolutely not!” Andromeda shouts. “No, Nymphadora.”

“She’s got a point,” Remus agrees hastily. “No sense putting all four of us at risk for a reconnaissance job.”

“There’s strength in numbers,” Tonks argues. “No offence—I know you’re all skilled duellists—but I can conceal my identity completely, and I’m the only trained—”

“I’m his godfather,” Sirius says, as though that settles it.

“We’ll come back as soon as we can,” Remus says as he and Sirius rush away.

They return sooner than Fleur expects—less than an hour. 

“Nothing!” Sirius kicks at the sofa. 

“We should do something about the Grangers,” Tonks says. “Offer them sanctuary.”

“We have been discussing—” 

But Sirius cuts Fleur off. “What about ‘nothing’ was ambiguous?” Sirius’s voice is scathing. “No one. Nothing. The house is fucking empty. It’s been shut up. They’re gone.”

“We have to assume Hermione moved them,” Tonks says. “She thinks about fifteen steps ahead. Probably moved them when she saw the writing on the wall. And if she did that, it stands to reason she also planned to get Harry out of harm's way when the time came. Would they go back to Grimmauld Place?” Tonks wonders.

“They know it’s not safe anymore.” Remus sounds dejected.

“If we knew _why_ they left, we could narrow our guesswork—”

“Who cares why?” Sirius says, eyeing Remus. “What’s important is finding him. We should stake out Grimmauld place, in case they risk it.”

“I can’t see Hermione taking them back there,” Tonks observes.

“Got any better ideas?” Sirius demands.

Nobody does, so they leave once more.

*

“Still not back?” Andromeda asks the next morning.

Fleur stands at the Muggle cooker listening out for the coffee, tapping her foot edgily on the floor. 

“‘Fraid not,” Tonks says around her toast.

“Don’t talk with your mouth full, Dora,” Andromeda admonishes before turning to Fleur. “Are you sure coffee’s for the best this morning? I know we’re all on edge. Probably the last thing we need is caffeine—”

“I’m having coffee,” Fleur snaps. “And why do you keep calling her Dora? She hates it, you know.” It’s been rubbing Fleur the wrong way since they got here—the disrespect Andromeda shows her daughter.

“Fleur!”

“Excuse me?” Andromeda sounds furious.

Fleur hears the coffee percolate and turns away from both of them to take it from the heat before it boils over. She pours a mug and heads back up to their room.

She hears footsteps behind her and a hand on her shoulder, stopping her partway up the stairs. She can tell it’s not Tonks. She turns around to face Ted. 

“Try not to take Andromeda too personally,” he advises. “She’s still hurt that Dora didn’t tell us about…” He looks bashful. “Well, you. She always imagined the two of them would be close.” He sighs. 

“They might be if she showed any respect for Tonks’s name, or job, or appearance,” Fleur says angrily. 

Ted ignores the slight, refusing to speak ill of his wife. Despite her own feelings about Andromeda, Fleur respects him for that. “I know this is always annoying to hear, but you just don’t know the full story with Andromeda. She’s incredibly protective where Dora is concerned. It did a number on her, losing her family—her sisters especially, ” Ted says. “They were thick as thieves when they were younger. And then Sirius got locked up before they got back in contact... Dora and me are all she’s got.”

“All the more reason for her to give Tonks her support, then.” 

Ted doesn’t disagree with her.

Fleur heads upstairs.

*

The tension between Fleur and Andromeda lingers and rises in the coming weeks. Remus and Sirius come and go for days at a time, insisting that the rest of them stay behind.

“Death Eaters and Snatchers everywhere—city and country.” Remus shares bleak news over sandwiches after they return late one night.

“Then I should be the one—” Tonks begins. She’s been desperate for something to do since it stopped being safe to go to work. Kingsley’s in the same boat. Under Thickneese, the Auror Department has folded, replaced by the Snatchers. All Aurors unwilling to work for the regime have gone into hiding. 

“No one is stopping me from helping Harry.” It’s the same argument each time. It’s hard to argue when Sirius plays the Azkaban card, especially considering if any of them get caught, they’ll face worse. Still, it’s nothing any of them wouldn’t risk for Harry.

*

_1 September 1997_

“I hate sitting around and doing nothing,” Tonks laments one night after dinner, as though it’s news to anyone. 

“You are not the only one,” Fleur says, because it’s true. “I could have done nothing in France. At least there I can drink my coffee in peace.” Fleur gives Andromeda a pointed look. At Fleur’s words, Tonks winces. 

“I’ve half a mind to go after Remus and Sirius,” Tonks adds after a minute. They’ve discussed the possibility, but somehow the prospect of goose-chasing the goose-chasers seems more futile than waiting at home for news. No one answers, not even Andromeda to offer words of dire warning. What would be the point?

That night Fleur can’t get to sleep. Sirius and Remus’s absences trigger bouts of insomnia. Next to her, Tonks is restless too, flopping back and forth from side to side, punching her pillow at intervals, always keeping some space between herself and Fleur.

“Tonks?” Fleur finally asks, exasperated, exhausted, and grumpy.

“I didn’t mean to wake you,” Tonks speaks to the wall.

“I have been awake since we came to bed.”

“Me too.”

Silence.

“What is keeping you up?” Fleur presses. “You usually excel at sleeping.”

“I’m thinking.” 

Fleur clenches her jaw. She hasn’t slept properly in at least three days, she can’t drink a coffee without getting a death glare from Andromeda, and now Tonks is being weirdly quiet. Fleur knows that her aggressive manner has become more pointed in the weeks since they fled the Burrow, but when she’s been staring at the ceiling for hours, trying to convince herself that her friends are safe, she can’t be arsed to muster up much patience. She’s knows it’s unfair to find Tonks’s mood grating when she herself is achieving new levels of crankiness. She just wishes Tonks would tell her what’s wrong so she can deal with it. “Spit it out.”

Tonks sighs and rolls onto her back. Fleur can see the outline of her face in the dark. “Do you really want to go back to France?”

Fleur’s clenched muscles loosen. Her heart, steeling for a fight just a minute ago, softens. “No.”

“Then why did you say it?”

“I was complaining. We all were. It is all we do now.”

“You haven’t said that before.”

Tonks has a point. Fleur rolls onto her right side to face her profile. “I am not leaving England. I am not a coward.”

“All we’re doing is faffing about the house eating my mum’s sandwiches,” Tonks whines. “Feels pretty cowardly to me.”

Fleur tries not to take that personally. She did ask Tonks to spit it out, after all. “You are restless.”

“Obviously,” Tonks says. “I’m used to running around robbing banks all whacked on Scooby Snacks.” She pauses. “But you also hurt my feelings.”

“Until last month you were a cop,” Fleur observes.

“Come on, Fleur.”

“Je suis désolée.” She means it. “Now it is your turn.”

“What?”

“To apologise for not telling your parents about me. I told mine about you over a year ago.”

“Yeah, that was shitty,” Tonks concedes. “I am sorry, honestly. It’s just that my mum has never approved of anything I’ve done. She hates my job, my clothes, my hair.” Tonks gestures to the dandelion yellow locks she’s sporting tonight. Somehow, between Tonks’s loud clothes, her loud hair, her brash sense of humour, her clumsy demeanour, her easy honesty, it had never occurred to Fleur that she could be harbouring deep self-consciousness. It doesn’t make Fleur admire her any less—it only makes her sense of affinity deepen. Here they are, two women people tend to see a certain way because of how they put themselves forward, both trying to be the person they present to the world. “And I just couldn’t bear the idea of her telling me she’s always known or something like that, and sounding disappointed about it. And…”

“What?” Fleur pushes herself up so she’s sitting, leaning on her right elbow, looking down at Tonks. She wants to hear everything Tonks is willing to tell her.

“And it was like… We never talked about anything, you know? About us, I mean.”

Fleur’s stomach feels like it is plummeting from a great height.

“We started sleeping together, and then we had to move and move again. And living with Remus and Sirius made everything feel so chill and normal, plus we were both stupid busy with our jobs and Order work. I never even had time to think about us, you know, properly.” She pauses. “Now all I have is time to think myself stupid.”

“And what are you thinking about?” Fleur asks, then adds, “I thought we were a couple. I assumed—” Fleur’s guts twist uncomfortably, filling with a multitude of venomous emotions: shame for assuming Tonks wanted Fleur just because she was always taught that everybody does; terror that she’s going to have to show up at Shell Cottage, hat in hand, and tell Bill that Tonks gave her her walking papers; humiliation that that’s not even accurate—she’s not even going to be broken up with, because Tonks never considered them a couple in the first place; dread at the look on Molly’s face when she finds out. She’ll probably think Fleur planned the whole thing, like some long con to worm her way into Bill’s house.

“I fancy the tits off you,” Tonks says. It’s odd to hear a proclamation like that made in such a tired voice, but Fleur latches onto it, cautious relief joining the conflict of emotions even as she steels herself for a ‘but.’ Tonks sits up and takes one of Fleur’s hands. Fleur has never been broken up with before. Is this the Hufflepuff variety? Tender hand holding to let you down gently? “You’re so determined, so driven. You’re smart as hell. You’re hot shit and you know it. You developed a spell to condense space, for fuck’s sake! And you didn’t have to do any of it. It’s like you said, you could have stayed in France, got the spells licensed. Hell, you could coast on your looks—we both know it.”

“I never said I would have preferred to stay in France.”

“Don’t interrupt me during share time.” But Tonks’s voice sounds a shade less tired, a hint more sweet. Fleur chokes out a laugh. “You’re the most selfless—”

“Ha!” Fleur can’t stop herself from blurting it out. “I would not describe myself that way.”

“Then you’re not as smart as I thought.”

“You are mischaracterising me. I—”

“Moved to England to join a war effort you could have safely sat out at home.”

“I will fight for Harry. Besides, if Voldemort wins, France is just across the channel.”

“That’s not the point.”

“Then what about you?” Fleur is no stranger to praise. She usually relishes it. But right now it feels misplaced. “ _You_ are selfless. I have never met anyone so alert to the feelings of others. I only care about the people I care about.”

“Deep.”

“Do not mock me right now!” Fleur whacks Tonks playfully on the arm. 

Tonks holds up her arms in mock surrender. “For the record, as far as I’m concerned there are worse bases for a relationship than thinking you’re a marvel and having sex with you for the last year and a half.”

“That has been thin on the ground lately.”

“One issue at a time,” Tonks says. Then she holds out one hand between them, palm down, like she’s presenting it for a kiss. “Fleur Delacour. Will join me in a relationship upgrade? Will you be my partner?” 

Fleur snatches Tonks’s hand and brings it to her laughing mouth, kissing it in response, before tackling Tonks back onto the bed. 

“We’re moving on to issue two, then?” Tonks asks.

“If you want to,” Fleur whispers in her ear from her vantage point straddling Tonks’s hips. “I am embarrassed for assuming we were on the same page before.” It’s true, but Fleur keeps her tone light. “So now you will have to tell me exactly what you want.”

Tonks grins. “No problem.”

> Image Description: A drawing of Fleur and Tonks in bed, as seen from the level of the bed. The top of Tonks’s head, and Fleur straddling her, is visible. Their hands are intertwined on either side of Tonks’s head. Fleur wears a grey shirt and is looking down at Tonks. Her legs are bare and her hair is messy. Art by [saulaie](https://saulaie.tumblr.com).

When they’re sweaty and satisfied, Fleur flops down onto the bed next to her. 

“Thank you,” Tonks says, like always. “That was fun.” She yawns, as though to draw a line under her point, then holds out one palm to Fleur, who smacks it with her own and laughs. If they ever stop laughing and having fun where sex is concerned, she’ll know they have a _real_ problem on their hands.

“And thank you,” Fleur returns. “It always is.” She turns to look at Tonks and grin at her. Despite her smile and her steadiness and surety when it comes to the sex between them, Fleur feels strangely vulnerable. She and Tonks have had sex at least a hundred times—that part has come easy to them. After their conversation, though, things feel different, auspicious, like they’ve crossed a river Fleur didn’t even know would appear to block their path. In the knowledge that she and Tonks had slightly different assumptions about the nature of their forerunning relationship, Fleur feels stupid. But Tonks also told her she fancies her and wants to be together—properly, officially. Sure, Fleur thought they already were, but that’s not Tonks’s fault. Tonks was honest with her, and Fleur wants to return that in kind, to give Tonks something more meaningful than an orgasm. Something that will keep. So she reaches into herself and says, “We’re going to live through this.”

“Don’t count on it,” Tonks jokes. “You just about broke me in half.”

“You know what I mean.”

“Way to harsh the vibe.”

“I mean it,” Fleur tells her, grabbing one of Tonks’s hands. “We’re going to get out of this. All of us. You and me and your parents and our friends. We are going to live. And then we can get back to real life.”

“No dead lesbians,” Tonks says. “I know I should keep things in perspective, but I am looking forward to moving back out of my parents’.” She pauses. “I wonder if giving your kids complexes is like, unavoidable.”

“You’d be a fantastic mother,” Fleur tells her. She means it. “You’ve learned so much about what not to do from yours.”

“Non starter,” Tonks says. Then she chuckles and adds, “There’s a mental image, though. Can you imagine the fights between Sirius, Remus, Bill, and Kingsley about who gets to donate sperm?”

Fleur snorts and Tonks keeps laughing. 

“First we have to get out of your parents’ house.”

“Fuck, tell me about it. I have cabin fever,” Tonks admits, throwing her arms above her head dramatically, and taking one of Fleur’s with her, their fingers still entwined.

Fleur is struck by a thought. “So we should leave the cabin.”

“And do what?” Tonks sighs. 

“We are not helpless. There must be something we can do for the war effort.”

“Fancy roving the streets of Yorkshire shooting curses at random, hoping to hit a Snatcher or two?”

Fleur thinks about that for a moment. “No. I think we should do the opposite.”

*

_2 September 1997_

Bang! “Have you heard!?” 

Kingsley’s call and Andromeda and Ted’s shrieks of alarm have Tonks out of bed in an instant. Fleur’s hot on her heels. They’d been napping; both of them are still in their pyjamas. When you’re house-bound, it’s amazing how pointless getting dressed seems. Though Tonks maintains that even when one is not hiding from a genocidal megalomaniac, getting dressed on a day you don’t plan on leaving the house is folly (“Why would I change into _less_ comfortable clothes?”).

In the kitchen, Kingsley is on the business end of a dressing down from Andromeda. “You scared the shit out of me!”

“Sorry, Andromeda.” But it’s hard to believe that Kingsley is sorry. He looks happier than Fleur can remember seeing him in months. The idea that anyone has come to this—their safe house, their self-imposed prison—with good news seems impossible.

“Mum, shut up; Kingsley, what the fuck do you look so happy about?” In spite of her excitement, Fleur finds a moment to appreciate that not just anyone could tell their mum to shut up and demand a dear friend defend the presence of a smile in such a jolly tone.

“He’s alive,” Kingsley explains.

“Harry?” Fleur cries. 

“And Hermione, and Ron,” Kingsley continues. 

“How do you know?” Tonks asks, skeptical. 

“Everyone knows,” Kingsley says. “They broke into the shitting Ministry and got away! Ministry’s trying to hush it up, but they managed to get a bunch of Muggleborns out—not much they could do for them, of course. Told them to get as far away as they could, from what I heard.”

Sirius and Remus appear in the kitchen out thin air. “Harry!” Sirius bellows.

“Shut up!” Tonks chimes. “Kingsley beat you to it.”

“They were pursued, but from what I could gather skulking around, they managed to get away.”

“You trust what you’re hearing?” Tonks says, evidently still suspicious of the hearsay.

“I do,” Kingsley says, voice utterly certain. And that’s clearly enough for Tonks. She beams.

“Must have done, or they’d be shouting the news of his capture so far and so wide, even we’d get wind of it,” Ted says with a smirk.

Fleur can physically feel her chest flood with relief. It’s one thing to know, logically, that if Harry had been captured, it would be sounded like a victory cry by the _Prophet_ and the WWN. It’s quite another to receive something tangible, something that doesn’t just stoke the fires of their hope with feeble Incendios, but burns through them like Fiendfyre. It’s incredible, actually, because Fleur can feel the warmth, the hope, the gratitude sweeping through everyone in the kitchen. Aside from Gabrielle and her parents, she’s never been overly concerned with the emotions of others, at least not until she met Tonks, then Bill, then Sirius and the rest of them. It’s a staggering experience, she finds, sharing this kind of bone-melting joy and relief with a group of people. She wonders if this is how people like Tonks and Harry feel all the time.

“I notice the runaways are gone, yet you’re back here.” Tonks gives Sirius and Remus a knowing look. “Don’t suppose losing Harry again was part of the plan?”

“What do you mean?” Sirius says, far too hastily. Remus just looks impressed.

“It’s been obvious for weeks that you found him,” Tonks begins.

“We assumed if you were keeping mum you had a damn good reason,” Kingsley finishes.

“Er...” Remus shifts from one foot to the other.

“We’ve been…” Fleur can actually see Sirius trying to spin a believable lie.

“It’s a wonder you weren’t both recruited to the Aurors straight out of Hogwarts, with those skills of deception,” Tonks jokes.

“We’re not going to ask where he was, or where he is,” Kingsley says, “but you’ve obviously been separated again. Is he—”

Tonks cuts him off. “Do you think he’s safe?”

“We don’t know where they are now,” Remus says, soundling lost. This time, Fleur believes him. “But we know their last haunt has been compromised. They won’t go back. I’m certain. I don’t know where they are—where’ll they’ll go now.”

“But we’re going to find him,” Sirius insists. “And help him if we can, along the way.” 

Kingsley nods in approval, and that closes the subject.

“I suppose the fact that none of us can sleep when we don’t know where you are, or if you’re dead in a ditch, is of any consequence here,” Andromeda says.

“No,” Sirius answers.

“I thought not.”

Ted takes her hand and squeezes.

Kingsley heads out again to see if he can glean more news about Harry’s escape. Sirius and Remus want to go with him, but Kingsley insists that, when it comes to keeping a low profile, three’s a crowd (especially when the two of the three include a foppish escaped convict and a known werewolf, both with dramatic streaks as long as a country mile).

It’s pretty much impossible to argue with Kingsley—he’s a natural leader, cool as a cucumber in a crisis, and his reasoning is Avada Kedavra-proof, so Remus and Sirius stay behind. Together, the six of them wait for news. 

Sitting around waiting is the world’s worst pastime. They brew pot after pot of tea, taking it in turns to abandon the sitting room, where they’ve moved to enjoy more robust and comfortable seating. Fleur offers the others coffee, but they all decline. “Your shit is strong enough to strip floors without magic,” Tonks tells her. “I’d be edgy as fuck if I drank that right now. But thank you.”

No one makes dinner. Instead, each of them gets up here and there to grab a handful of dry cereal or a piece of fruit or a chunk of cheese.

Tonks, as is her wont, is constantly in motion. If she’s not brewing and pouring tea, snacking, or going to the loo, she’s changing positions, moving to the floor to stretch, craning her neck to look at the clock. Fleur suddenly wishes she could see her on a stake out. Fleur knows Tonks can master herself when the occasion calls for it; she doesn’t doubt Tonks’s ability to do anything that needs doing.

When it’s dark outside and Fleur’s arse is starting to hurt from sitting, Tonks jumps up from where she’s been stretching her hips on the floor. “Okay, this just isn’t healthy,” she announces, before leaving the room. Fleur considers going after her, only she hadn’t really seemed upset, just bored.

A couple of minutes pass, and Fleur is about to follow Tonks to wait in their room, but Tonks bursts back in carrying a Muggle cardboard box.

“Are those—”

“Your records,” Tonks affirms with a smile.

“Which were in our room, if I recall,” Sirius accuses.

“Oh pft,” Tonks replies. “There is no privacy in a safehouse.”

“Clearly,” Remus agrees, though he chuckles. Sirius crosses his arms and opens his mouth.

“Don’t bother Sirius; I’m not sorry. We all know when anyone in this house is getting it on or using the bloody toilet. These were sitting on the desk; it’s not like I went through your lube drawer.” Fleur smiles. She appreciates Tonks making an effort around her parents—it’s amusing to watch her trying to bravada her way through the discomfort into her usual flow of queer banter. “And anyway, I brought _your_ albums out here to distract you, in case you hadn’t noticed. Be grateful you’re not getting The Prodigy.”

That seems to shut Sirius up. He gets up and reaches for the box, but Tonks pulls it back. “I said we’re listening to your tunes. I didn’t say you get to pick.” After a minute, she selects a record and puts it on Ted’s turntable. At first, every note of the music feels discordant. It seems odd to include Elton John in their waiting game. But not entirely. Somehow, knowing Harry escaped the clutches of the Death Eaters—again!—doesn’t feel like cause for solemnity. When the first notes of Benny and the Jets sound in the room, something about the fun, the cheek, the flash, and the camp of the song seems to resonate in the part of Fleur that upgraded her relationship with Tonks last night, that is feeling more hopeful than she has in over a month. It seems to touch her comrades similarly—here and there she sees toes tapping, eyes closing to enjoy certain bits, smiles widening. Fleur flips the record when the first side is done, and Remus replaces it with the second disc after that. Tonk drops herself into Fleur’s lap when All the Girls Love Alice comes on, waggling her eyebrows at her. When Saturday Night’s Alright for Fighting starts, as if by auditory magic, they find themselves in the midst of a singalong. For a while the music alleviates their restlessness, celebrates Harry’s escape. 

Though Tonks had made a point of choosing the first album, she indicates Sirius ought to pick when Elton’s had his say. They listen to Let’s Dance, and the fast beats and catchy melodies continue to lift their spirits. 

When it’s over, Remus nods to Andromeda. 

“Yes! For all these years I’ve been bearing the weight of being the only one in the family with good taste in music,” Sirius says as Andromeda drops the needle on the a-side of Electric Warrior extended version. The first song’s not even over and they are dancing in their chairs.

“Marc Bolan is my purest love,” Sirius announces, swaying with the rhythm. “Sorry, Moony.”

“Considering he’s dead, you’ll forgive me if I don’t worry too much about the competition.”

“It was sad when he went to heaven,” Sirius says mournfully, pausing his motions for a moment. “He’s the only person besides Fleur whose hair was ever better than mine.”

Sirius grills Remus about whether or not he’d look good with a perm as Ted flips the album. Remus steadfastly refuses to answer.

When the B-side begins, Tonks meets Fleur’s eyes and nods her head to the centre of the room. Fleur offers her a hand, and Tonks pulls her out of her chair. It hurts to get up—her arse is stiff as hell and one of her feet is asleep. It feels painfully good to move around, dancing with Tonks, getting her blood flowing.

When Kingsley returns, he finds six people dancing to The Motivator, all trying to outdo one another with the most Muppet-like moves.

“Interrupting something?” Kingsley asks.

“We’re unwinding, Kingsley,” Tonks calls over the music, which has been turned to full blast. “It’s grisly to sit around like we’re already in mourning. Harry did something huge today—we’re celebrating. We’re not going to save any lives by not spending ours.”

“He definitely got away,” Kingsley says, coming over to where they’ve paused their dancing. “Hide nor hair of any of the three of them.”

“The Snatchers have no trail. And you’ll love this.” He looks at Remus and Sirius. “They didn’t only get Muggleborns out from under the Registration Commission, they robbed Dolores Umbridge.”

Remus and Sirius say nothing, but the look they share says enough. For whatever reason, this robbery is good news. Kingsley gives them the rest of the details, few though they are.

“This calls for a celebration!” Tonks pulls her wand out of her pyjama pocket and waves it, Vanishing the coffee table.

“Dora!”

“It’ll come back, Mum. When the time is right.”

“When will that be, exactly?” Ted asks, dubious.

“After we dance to Hot Love.” Tonks goes to the turntable, adjusting the needle and restarting the song. “Clap on the beat. Clap with Marc Bolan, people.” 

Everyone does, though not without a few rolled eyes. Conversely, Sirius looks as though his ship has come in.

As they clap, Tonks restarts the track. “Okay, now keep that and follow along.”

In front of them all, Tonks dances, shuffling right or left, and clapping on the beat. She rolls her shoulders, shimmies her chest, sways her hips, bends her knees lower and lower with each beat. “I want to hear loud La-la-la-la-la-la-las!” She moves her body in simple motions, and the rest of them do their best to follow along, often mistepping, dancing into one another, and cackling all the way. By the time the song plays out, Fleur is laughing so hard she’s winded.

Sirius claps Tonks on the shoulder. “I thought the 70s weren’t up to snuff.”

“I never said that. I just acknowledge that good tunes continued being made afterward. Besides, it’s impossible not to love T.Rex. I don’t make the law, I just enforce it,” Tonks jokes.

“We raised her well,” Ted quips.

After they dance together, the moment passes. None of them grasp to keep it alive. They put on more music, but take their seats again, discussing what Harry’s getaway, his robbery, might mean. Sirius and Remus are noticeably quiet.

“We’ll stay tonight and head out tomorrow,” Sirius says, eventually. 

“I shouldn’t think we’ll be more than a few days before checking in,” Remus adds. “If nothing else, living on the lam sucks.”

“Hear, hear.” Sirius raises a hand in a mock-toast.

Sirius and Remus head to their bedroom—to get sleep, or to get it on. Probably both. Fleur hopes they seize this moment of levity and make the most of it. She’s not stupid enough to think that Harry’s narrow escape means it’ll all be over by Tuesday.

Andromeda and Ted say their goodnights soon after, leaving Kingsley with Fleur and Tonks in the living room.

“I’m proud of you for keeping your ear to the ground, Kingsley,” Tonks says. Fleur notices Tonks doesn’t ask if he’s staying safe, being careful. Perhaps Tonks trusts his skills enough not to diminish them by asking, or perhaps she knows that right now, no one can be entirely safe, entirely careful.

“If we just stay out of it, it’s hopeless,” Kingsley replies. “For all of us.”

“Actually, Fleur was thinking—” says Tonks.

At the same time, Kingsley says, “I had an idea—”

“You first.” Tonk nods encouragingly.

“Reconnaissance is all well and good, but it’s not going to win any wars. I’ve been thinking we need to do something with the information, and not just share it among the Order; there aren’t enough of us.”

“What did you have in mind?” Fleur presses.

“We need to get information out there, information that everyone at risk can use. I was thinking we could appropriate some WWN airspace.”

“Yes!” Tonks enthuses. “I love it. Always my man with a plan.” Tonks raises one hand, and Kingsley slaps it, looking pleased his idea has been well received. “I want in—Fleur too, right?”

“Evidemment.”

“Great.” Kingsley claps his own hands together as though to pass the motion. “We can talk more about the how later. You had an idea, too, Fleur?”

“Nothing as elegant as yours,” Fleur admits. 

“She wants to go incognito to Muggle areas that Death Eaters are likely to target and ward the houses.”

“Tell me more,” says Kingsley.


	5. Chapter 5

_October 1997_

Effective wards take time and energy to cast, but between Tonks’s training in defensive magic and Fleur’s expertise, they manage to ward a couple of places a night. Sometimes they’re joined by Andromeda, or Ted, or Remus and Sirius (if they’re around), or Kingsley (when he’s not busy trying to figure out how to set up an illicit radio station (Tonks, Bill, and, apparently, Mundungus all suggested getting in touch with the Weasley twins)). 

They know they can’t ward everything, so they have to be choosey, which is coldly calculating, but there’s nothing for it. They stick to places on the outskirts of magical communities, places where Muggles and magicals might meet, drawing the lethal attention of the Death Eaters. Aside from that, they pick spots next to landmarks—buildings likely to go down if more bridges “collapse” or “inclement weather” strikes. Between the two, they find themselves most often in either the biggest urban centres, or else out in the sticks. They necessarily go out at night to avoid being seen doing wandwork by Muggles, and when they get down to work, casting spells around cottages, townhouses, blocks of flats, and community halls, Fleur feels dangerously exposed, whether she’s turning her back on dark woods or city streets. 

Tonks is the easiest to disguise, although her ability to maintain changes to her height and build has suffered from her time spent indoors. “I told you I have cabin fever!” She laughs it off when Fleur points out one night that she’s back to her regular height—she’d assumed a taller stature before they left. But her laughter doesn’t entirely conceal a nervous demeanour. Fleur doesn’t want to press the issue. If being cooped up is wearing on Tonks enough that she’s having trouble with a skill she mastered over a decade ago, she doesn’t want to add pressure by harping on about it.

The rest of them make do with glamours. 

After the first week of running around, Tonks complains that Fleur’s hair attracts attention no matter what.

“I don’t understand. It’s like it captures the light somehow, even when it’s pitch black out. Is this a Veela thing?”

So Fleur has Ted, who wears his own hair short, buzz it off. 

So much for the face that launched a thousand ships, Fleur thinks, alone in the bathroom where she’d gone to check the result. When she looks in the mirror, she can’t believe how different she looks. It is as though it completely changed her bone structure, and just as she was coming to appreciate her used to plumper cheeks, too.

“You know what’s incredible?” Tonks asks her when Fleur returned to the kitchen, where Andromeda, Remus, and Sirius were all sat around the table while Ted stood behind Fleur’s empty chair. “You actually look hotter.” 

“I like it.” Fleur passes a hand over the top of her head, swiping it against the grain of the stubble. As a matter of fact, she doesn’t like it, but she hopes she can get used to it. _It is only hair_ , she tells herself. _It is only appearances. You are at war. Hair is not important. Don’t be shallow._ (To her amazement, the mantra seems less like a lie every time Ted gives her a fresh crop.)

“Very Sinéad O’Connor,” Andromeda remarks, which Fleur supposes was inevitable.

“That’s a compliment,” Remus tells Fleur. Fleur’s not sure how the buzzing of her hair became a family affair.

“Fancy Sinéad, do you?” Sirius pretends to be affronted.

“We aren’t all full-time gay,” Remus explains.

“Nor do we all want to be!” Tonks chimes from where she is leaning on the counter.

“Ready when you are,” Tonks whispers next to her on their next warding mission. Tonight it’s just the two of them in a quiet field around a stone cottage.

“Okay,” Fleur says. It’s a new moon and they’re in rural Wales. There are no effective street lamps; it’s too dark to communicate with nods or hand gestures. “The usual.”

The cottage is as basic as it gets. No need to alter the spells to accommodate dozens of entry points, or multiple stories higher and higher off the ground.

Fleur raises her wand to begin. Tonks joins her. Together they close their eyes and whisper incantations, pouring as much determination into them as they can. It’s quite a bit of mental aerobics—to focus completely even when you’re scared shitless you might be seen by anyone at any moment. These kinds of spells necessarily require proximity to the dwelling, which is always a concern. But, frankly, Fleur is less worried about some Muggle thinking they’re burglars than being caught by a Snatcher.

“Bring them on,” Sirius always says when anyone mentions taking care, or watching their backs. “Fewer arseholes chasing after Harry. I’m starving for a proper fight anyway—haven’t had one since the Department of Mysteries.” Whenever he says things like this, Remus tries not to wince. Fleur gets it.

But Sirius isn’t here. It’s just her and Tonks, speaking the words they need to protect this house, opening their hearts and just _feeling_ the raw desire to prevent harm, if only for one home amongst millions. Limited though their aid may be, Fleur can’t regret it. No one can protect them all, except perhaps Harry, and that’s an entirely different (and shockingly unjust) scenario.

Fleur can feel her magic flowing from her heart down her right arm and out, into the earth surrounding the cottage. Most protective wards work this way—rooted in the ground around the edifice.

After a couple of minutes spent close-eyed and chanting, they Apparate just outside the boundary of their home Fidelius Charm and walk quickly inside.

Safe in their bedroom, the unspent adrenaline of making it back without incident makes Fleur dizzy. She reaches around Tonks’s waist with both hands, grabbing her arse and pulling Tonks flush against herself. She looks Tonks in the eye. 

“Yes.”

Permission granted, Fleur shoves her back onto the bed, then pulls her trousers off. She’s got her period, and she and Tonks have been synched up since back at Tonks’s old flat, so Fleur leaves her underwear in place. There’s plenty of ways to make them both feel good without getting completely naked.

“You can touch me,” Tonks tells her, pushing her pants down around her knees. “I’m a little late.”

*

They’re coming to the end of their first incantation when Fleur hears the crack of a twig breaking in the distance. She wills her eyes to remain shut, not to open reflexively, not to break the spell. It’s probably an animal roaming in the bush a ways off. She wants to open just one eye, just a crack, to check on Tonks beside her, but their hands are still clasped. And, though Tonks’s hand twitched at the noise, she hasn’t let go. Fleur wants to let some of her instantly heightened nerves out by speaking inanities about how it’s nothing, how there are loads of wild animals around here. She wants to ask Tonks whether she thinks it might be the others, finished before them, as though Tonks could possibly have any information she lacks. But they can’t break the chant. That’s the thing about truly protective magic—performing it almost always leaves the caster vulnerable. Fleur’s studied it enough to know that, in truth, that’s how the magic works.

Neither of them stop, but Fleur swears she can feel Tonks’s heightened concentration next to her. They keep casting. To leave the place partially warded would be worse than if they’d never come at all—as good as a bullseye marking these Muggles as targets. 

More breaking sticks. The swing of brush moving. Perhaps a fox? Or it could be Ted and Andromeda, come to rejoin them. They’d know not to call out, not to break their concentration. But when they split into groups cover more ground, they always return home when they are done. Trying to reconvene might bring attention down upon them. 

Anyway, they are close, and as long as Tonks keeps whispering next to her, Fleur will do likewise. 

Whispers. Not Tonks’s. Too far away to make out, but much, much too close for comfort. 

They are almost done. They keep casting. 

“Oi!” A voice that is not Ted’s, not Andromeda’s. 

“Looks like we’ve got a couple of Muggle-lovers,” croaks another.

Fleur can feel the spell finish, her magic ceasing to flow to the ground when the ward is sealed. She hears “ _Stupefy_!” But it must be poorly aimed, because she doesn’t even feel it whiz by. Eyes still closed, Fleur Apparates them away.

Inside, the house is empty.

“Dad?! Mum?!”

“Tonks?” It’s Remus’s voice that answers. He wasn’t here when they left.

“Remus!” Tonks calls back. “Are my parents here?”

Remus runs to meet them in the kitchen, Sirius on his heels. “We just got back. We thought they were out with you.”

“They were.” Tonks sounds frantic. “But we were interrupted by some Snatchey fuckers.”

“There might have been more of them, spreading out to cover more ground,” Fleur reasons. “We should go back.”

“I think you’re giving them more credit than they deserve,” says Sirius. “The Snatchers we’ve seen haven’t got a brain cell to share between them.”

‘They don’t need to be smart to get lucky,” Tonks argues. “I don’t need to remind you that dad is Mug— DAD!” Tonks throws her arms around her father the moment he bursts through the back door that opens into the kitchen. When she lets him go, Fleur can see a nasty gash across his forehead bleeding so heavily that he can’t keep his eyes open. Andromeda enters after him and guides him to a chair.

“Snatchers saw us,” she tells them before anyone can ask. “Talk about a _real_ disgrace to magical people everywhere: the blockheads only managed to hit Ted because one of them tripped while she was casting.”

Andromeda heals Ted’s wound and casts a Scourgify to clear away the blood, but he still heads for a shower. “Scourgify just doesn’t feel like proper cleaning.”

“It’s like using hand sanitiser after going to the toilet,” Tonks agrees loyally.

*

The morning after the close call, Remus and Sirius head out again. They never say where they are going, or what for. But considering they seem increasingly disenchanted each time they return, Fleur seriously doubts they are still in communication with Harry. She thinks of Harry, who plainly adores his godfather, and Sirius, who returns the feeling in kind. She thinks of the way Harry looks when he’s around Remus, as though his doting attention is a gift. She feels for Harry. She knows that Hermione and Ron are good friends, but she also knows the feeling of being separated from family for everyone’s safety, and she doesn’t wish it on Harry.

Fleur is dumping coffee grounds into her bialetti. They aren’t even good, but owl-ordering beans is hardly a priority these days. Everytime she makes coffee now she complains about the taste—overly acidic instead of richly bitter.

She fills the bialetti with an Aguamenti, flicks the lid shut, and sets it on the Muggle cooktop before turning to the toaster.

“I already made some,” Tonks tells her, munching on her usual, scorched bread with butter. Fleur eyes the blackened bread. “A bit of charcoal is good for you,” Tonks says in response to Fleur’s look. They both smile.

Andromeda joins them and takes a seat as Fleur pours her coffee. Before she sits down, Fleur clears out the bialetti and starts the process over—Andromeda is also a coffee lover, and since her talk with Tonks last month, Fleur finds herself more willing to extend olive branches to Tonks’s mother, especially considering Andromeda’s edgier than ever now that they are leaving the house most nights.

“Last night was too close.” Fleur might not adore Andromeda, but she does appreciate her forthrightness. “I didn’t get any sleep. What if your father—”

Tonks reaches out to put her hand over her mother’s. “We all made it back. I’m not saying we shouldn’t be careful—take precautions—but Sirius is right, you know; it’s mostly flunkies they have Snatching. Kingsley says—”

“I don’t want your father going out anymore. It’s too dangerous for a Muggleborn.”

“What does Dad say?” Tonks asks.

“If he has any sense, ‘Yes, dear’ with a bloody smile,” says Andromeda.

Fleur hands Andromeda the coffee she already brewed and waits for the next to percolate.

“Thank you, Fleur.” Andromeda’s voice is tight, but polite.

“Excuse me.” Tonks flies out of the room. The bathroom door slams shut.

“Tonks?” Fleur turns to look at Andromeda, who’s eyeing her mug, before following Tonks down the hall. She knocks on the door in time to hear the toilet flush. 

“Be right out.” Her voice sounds dull and hoarse.

When the door opens, Fleur puts the back of her hand to Tonk’s forehead. “Are you feeling unwell? You don’t feel hot.”

“Gee, thanks.” A weak attempt at a joke. “The coffee smells like shit—it made me nauseated,” Tonks says.

“I have been saying this—” 

“I didn’t raise an idiot,” Andromeda says, coming down the hall. “No coffee is so repellent it makes a person sick over one whiff.” She pulls out her wand and tilts her head, asking Tonks for permission to cast. Tonks nods.

Andromeda doesn’t speak, but waves her wand in a diagnostic motion Fleur recognises. Tonks’s eyes go wide—she clearly does too. 

“Congratulations,” Andromeda says after a moment, wand hand falling slowly to her side. “Whose it is?”

*

“How dare you!” Fleur screams, back in the kitchen. She and Andromeda are yelling at one another so loudly that Ted’s rushing footsteps can barely be heard on the stairs as he runs to find out what the commotion is about. Fleur rues every coffee she’s made the woman in the last month.

“It’s a reasonable question!” Andromeda insists. “We’ve been in hiding for months. It has to have been—”

“Mum, I’m not shagging Remus _or_ Kingsley _or_ Bill. Or Sirius, obviously. Fleur knocked me up with her magic clit, get with the programme.”

“Don’t be vulgar,” Andromeda chides.

“Knocked you up?” Ted looks like he could be blown over by the slightest of breezes. He drops into a chair. “You’re…?”

“She’s pregnant, Ted.”

“You’re sure?” Ted asks Tonks.

“Positive, so to speak.”

“Perhaps your wandwork was sloppy,” Fleur scorns. In point of fact, she watched Andromeda cast the spell correctly. But the sour look on Andromeda’s face is worth it, especially if it brings Fleur, rather than Tonks, back onto the business end of her wrath. “May I cast it again?”

“Sure.” Tonks shrugs. She looks far away, as though while her body sits in this kitchen, her mind, or perhaps her spirit, is elsewhere.

Fleur casts the spell, this time verbally so there can be no doubt. The result does not change.

“But how—”

“Good news!” Kingsley says by way of a greeting as he Moves House and appears in the kitchen without warning.

“You too?” Tonks seems unstartled, voice as distant as her expression.

The rest of them jump at Kingsley’s arrival. “Morgana take the broom,” Andromeda huffs out. “You couldn’t have built a doorbell into that spell?”

“It is an invocation,” Fleur says, flatly, as though Andromeda is too simple to grasp the subtle difference.

“You have news, Kingsley?” Tonks speaks over the two of them. 

Kingsley looks at Tonks, taking in her unusually sombre demeanour, but apparently decides the best course of action is to proceed, though he grabs a chair and pulls it over to sit across from her. “Fred and George Weasley have found a way to elbow their way into WWN airspace. Now we just need a reasonably secure location, and we can start Potterwatch.”

“Potterwatch?” Ted asks. 

“Lee came up with it. He says it needs to be something short and catchy. And ‘Potter’ is one of the biggest buzz words out there. We won’t actually talk much about Harry, I don’t imagine. More about the state of affairs, share any news we can.”

“Why can’t you host it at your place?” Andromeda asks.

“The Fidelius,” Fleur answers before anyone can beat her to it. “The house and the goings on inside are effectively non-existent for anyone without the address.”

“Well done, boy-os,” Tonks says, managing some genuine-sounding excitement. “I’ll be your inaugural guest.” The news seems to have brought Tonks back to herself a bit. Or maybe, Fleur thinks, it’s a welcome, momentary distraction _from_ herself. “It can be your gift to me.”

“Gift?” Kingsley asks her.

“Yeah. Instead of a baby shower you can give me my radio debut.”

“Baby shower?” Kingsley asks again, eyes flicking to Tonks’s stomach, then looking at Fleur. “Immaculate conception?”

“Thank you for not assuming that I’m cheating on my partner,” Tonks says. Kingsley nods obligingly. “Though I wouldn’t exactly call it immaculate. Scissoring is no joke.”

“Nymphadora!” Andromeda chides.

“Repressed English.” Fleur makes no effort to lower her voice and throws in a despairing head-shake for good measure. “And what does she have to do to make you stop calling her—”

“Not now, Fleur,” Tonks and Ted say together.

“If you insist you didn’t—” Andromeda begins, but Tonks cuts her off. 

“I insist.” 

“I believe you,” Fleur tells her, stepping towards her and Kingsley, putting a hand on the back of each of their chairs.

Tonks reaches across her torso with one arm and puts her hand over Fleurs. “Thank you.”

“Being stuck inside with your Kinsey Six of a cousin, his boyfriend, and your dad does lend credibility to your claim,” Kingsley admits. “Not that I wouldn’t have believed you anyway.”

“Ta, Kingsley.”

“Then how did this happen?” Andromeda demands.

"Aren't you..." Ted blushes and his eyes dart from Tonks to the floor. "Safe?"

"Always," Fleur asserts.

"But we didn't think we needed contraception charms!" Tonks appends defensively.

“There’s some precedent that I know of, with wizards,” Kingsley offers.

“Right but there’s, you know—” Ted falters.

“Sperm,” Andromeda finishes for him. “With men.”

“You call yourself second wave?” Tonks chastises. “Pretty patriarchal to assume conception is all about sperm.”

“Aristotelian,” Fleur appends.

“That guy was a prat,” Kingsley says. 

Ted puts the kettle on and Kingsley gives the crew the skinny on the plan for Potterwatch. The plan, to a certain degree, is to have no plan. It’s the best way to get it off the ground and keep it going. If they pick broadcast locations at the last minute and at random, as well as the air dates and times, it’ll be damn difficult to catch them at it. It was Kingsley’s idea, but he emphasises that Lee, Fred, and George are his partners in social crime. 

When Kingsley heads back home, Tonks and Fleur head to their bedroom. 

“I hope Kingsley finds a spot soon. I’m dying to do something properly defiant,” Tonks says, as though Potterwatch is the biggest news they got today. Tonks heads for her dresser and takes out a pajama top, pulling off the tent-like ‘Frankie Says Relax’ shirt she’s wearing in exchange for some broomstick-patterned cotton before kicking off her trousers and jumping into bed in her pants. Fleur crosses her arms. “Hey!” Tonks’s voice is grim with false levity. “You sleep in just pants all the time.”

“Fucking English.” Fleur tightens the knot of her arms over her chest. “You are pregnant. We must talk about what to do.”

Tonks sits up and pulls her knees to her chest, then looks at her stomach and releases them, flopping out like a starfish on the mattress. “It doesn’t feel real. I didn’t want to let Mum’s guff slide downstairs, but, honestly, how can it be?”

“Kingsley said there is precedent. I have heard of this occasionally with wizards en France as well.”

“But it just seems so… impossible? Like, I know how babies are made.”

“You think it is easier to conceive by getting fucked in the arse?”

Tonks grimaces. “I’m feeling a lot of male-chauvinism right now. It’s weird. Definitely not my usual.”

“No.” Fleur approaches the bed. It’s heartbreaking to see Tonks like this—so deflated, so confused. “May I?” She gestures to a spot on the bed between Tonks’s outstretched arm and leg. “If magic can work with that, why not with us?”

“How are you not weirded out by this?” Tonks sits up again and scooches backwards to lean against the headboard.

Fleur shrugs. “We’re witches.”

“You don’t think it’s because I’m a Metamorphmagus, do you? I know you didn’t exactly sign up for pregnancy scares. That’s supposed to be one of the fringe benefits of humping someone with matching junk.”

“I do not blame you, if that is what you are asking. It could just as easily have something to do with my family.” Fleur sighs. “I do not want to speculate about all that.” Tonks looks surprised. “I am curious,” Fleur admits, “to read more on the subject. The library access around here is poor.” 

Tonks laughs. “You’re such a Ravenclaw.”

Fleur wrinkles her nose. “Do not sort me into one of your silly houses.” She nudges the back of Tonks’s hand with her own, seeking an invitation. 

Tonks grabs it and pulls it to her mouth to kiss it. “Do you want to keep it?” Tonks asks.

“Ha!” Fleur can’t help it. “ _You_ are asking _me_?” Tonks nods. “The question is do _you_ want to keep it? It is not for me to decide.”

“No, it’s not, but I want to know where you stand on the ‘Surprise! Your partner is magically pregnant!’ spectrum.”

Fleur shifts her body so she’s facing Tonks. 

“Like, are we talking ‘Total Catastrophe?’ ‘Bummer?’ ‘Neutral?’ ‘Ambivalent?’ ‘Presently morphing into Molly?’ It matters to me, to how— to how we go forward.” Tonks pauses. “To _whether_ we go forward.” 

Fleur is not without practice when it comes to speaking truthfully. She never used to hesitate to remind others that she’s beautiful, magically brilliant, that eating English ‘cuisine’ inevitably results in food-regret. But she is beginning to realise that speaking the truth is not necessarily tantamount to speaking from the heart. She also knows that this situation calls for both, and that Tonks, with her laser-like ability to detect insincerity, will be able to spot any artifice. 

“I am shocked,” Fleur admits. Tonks closes her eyes, clearly bracing herself. Fleur gives her hand a squeeze. “But also…” She halts.

“Also?” Tonks urges her on.

“I worry what I say will affect how you feel about whatever you decide.”

Tonks tugs on Fleur’s arm and guides her into a sitting position across from her. She takes Fleur’s hands into her own, resting them between their bodies. “Tell me how you feel.” 

“I want to meet the baby we made. I want to see how much it looks like you. I want to win this war so it will live in peace.” She steels herself. “I do not want to think about Metamorphmagi or Veelas because—” she looks Tonks straight in the eyes “—I hope that has nothing to do with it. I cannot presume to know your feelings, but I know my heart, and I would like to think that how we feel about each other made this baby.”

“Say it.” It’s the gentlest demand Fleur has ever heard, and she’s never wanted to obey more. 

“I love you.”

“I love you too, stupid.” Tonks tells her. Fleur can feel Tonks’s relief like a physical force—it’s impossible to miss; it speaks directly to her own. “You’re a bad-ass rebel who gives top-shelf cuddles—best of both worlds. And I want to meet this baby too. I figure if it’s shit, babysitters abound.”

*

Two days after they find out that conception between two witches is possible and decide to go unto that breach together, Kingsley shows up while Fleur and Tonks are doing the washing up.

“Ready?” he asks.

“Fuck yes.” The dish towel Tonks is enchanting to dry the flatware drops onto the floor. “Oops!”

“Get ready for your wand-eye coordination to deteriorate,” Andromeda advises. “Pregnancy brain is a real thing.”

“Mum, stop being a pregnancy essentialist. It’s different for everyone.”

“When I was—”

“It’s not my fault you’re a dunderhead. If anything, your doofishness while I was in utero made me the clutz standing before you.”

Kingsley clears his throat. “I’d like to draw your attention back to the illicit, anti-puppet-government radio broadcast waiting to air.”

“Sorry Kingsley. I’m ready. Fleur?”

“Bien sur.”

“You’re not still considering participating in this?” Andromeda asks, standing up from her seat at the table.

“I’m not considering anything. I’m going,” Tonks parries.

“You can’t be serious. Galavanting around was dangerous enough before you were pregnant. Now—”

“Mum, I’ll categorically refute all your arguments later.” Tonks links arms with Kingsley and Fleur. “We’ve got a dictatorial government to undermine.”

The three of them head outside and walk out from the cover of the Fidelius. Kingsley Side-Alongs them both, and they land in a house Fleur doesn’t recognise. She doesn’t bother asking where they are. Fred and George greet them and introduce her and Tonks to their friend, Lee Jordan.

There’s almost nothing in the house except a rickety table that looks likely to collapse under the magical-mechanical setup it’s supporting. 

“I’ll be hosting,” Lee tells them. “Kingsley and I agreed it’s best to have at least one person the same each show, if possible, to generate familiarity and trust. Practically speaking, I’m the least likely of us all to be targeted. My ties to the Order aren’t public knowledge.”

“Sounds good,” Tonks enthuses. Fleur agrees. Lee makes a superb first impression; Fleur can see why Fred and George brought him into this.

“Lee will lead the conversation. He’ll read the news, the real news, I mean. And he’ll ask us about possible acts of resistance, what we think of the current regime, if we think Harry’s alive, whether we believe he’s done a bunk—that kind of thing. I hope it goes without saying that, despite everything, we should keep the tone as optimistic as possible, and definitely not undermine Harry.”

“No problem.”

“Entendu.”

“Course!”

“Excellent! That just leaves code names. We don’t want to use real names, but we do want people who know us to know who we are—know we’re okay, that we’re fighting. I’m going to use River,” Lee says, without a shred of embarrassment.

“Kingsley, you have to be Royal,” George jokes. 

“Fine,” Kingsley agrees, clearly eager to get the salamander into the fire.

“Robespierre?” Fred suggests to Fleur. 

“Racine,” she decides, shrugging. “I loved _Bérénice_."

“Qu'est-ce que le fuck is that?” Tonks asks.

Fleur snorts, and Kingsley clears his throat.

“Right, later. I’ll be Rukus.” Everyone laughs, despite the weight of what they’re about to do. “Where do we sit?”

*

_November 1997_

Fleur and Tonks keep going out warding over the next month, despite Andromeda’s dire remonstrances. They go on Potterwatch again. Remus, Sirius, Mad-Eye, and Bill also lend their voices to the show, as well as Ted, to give a Muggleborn perspective. Each episode they count and mourn the dead. Kingsley takes every opportunity to remind the listeners that ‘Wizards first’ is a slippery slope (“and a patriarchal one!” Tonks reminds them). They talk about Harry—using their personal connections to assure listeners that wherever Harry is, he is working towards Voldemort’s demise. Except, at Sirius’s suggestion, they call him Voldy, or Moudly, or any number of other ludicrous names, ever since Kingsley learned the hard way about the Taboo. Lee asks Fleur about her involvement as an expat. She talks about Harry, about his bravery, her certainty that he is doing everything he can, the importance of supporting him in word and deed. Lee urges her on, so she continues, speaking a sort of train of consciousness. She elaborates on Kingsley’s oft-repeated sentiments, telling listeners that it’s dangerous to think of this as a British problem. “If there are none to stand up to him here, what will stop him from crossing the Channel? None of us, none of our loved ones are safe, unless everyone is.”

“Well said,” Lee says, moving the conversation along. “On that note, another day goes by with no sign of The Boy Who Lived—sorry Haz. We’ve said it here before: this can only be a good sign for the resistance…”

Even though Potterwatch is, in a certain sense, less tangible in its benefits than warding unsuspecting homes, Fleur hasn’t felt this active since she and Sirius were teaching Order members how to Move House.

And the show, whether she’s a guest or a listener, seems to offer Tonks a welcome distraction; despite worsening morning sickness, she’s less restless. The downside is Andromeda. It’s become not unlike living with a Dementor. Each time they prepare to go warding, the whole house is treated to a litany of cautions about their safety, about whether or not they care about family at all, even as Andromeda herself pulls on her coat, hat, and gloves to accompany them. Fleur can’t help but notice that she does not receive the same concern when she leaves, glamoured as well as possible, to do the shopping, a household task that has fallen strictly to her or Remus ever since they went deep under cover. They can’t risk relying on Kreacher to keep them provisioned with goods from Diagon Alley, can’t—more to the point—risk Kreacher knowing the locations of any Order safe house. House-elf Apparition isn’t the same as Moving House, and it would be all too easy for one of the Malfoys or Lestranges to recognise him, grab hold, and follow him into their Fidelius. But they have to eat, and Fleur and Remus are the least wanted, and therefore the most able to slide under the figurative (or literal, as the case may be) tracking charm. 

It’s positively bizarre to leave behind conversations about the survival of the Magical community as they know it to buy bananas and tea and latex gloves and dental dams (ever since Tonks got pregnant they've added contraception charms to their usual protection charms to ensure Fleur doesn't end up likewise, but considering magic got them into this, they're taking no chances). When they get low on pantry staples and sex supplies, Fleur thinks how odd it is that their bodies have no respect for the fact that they are living through a war. They are annoyingly persistent, ceaselessly demanding sustenance and sleep and showers and sex. Then Fleur thinks of Tonks, pregnant by accident—by magic or miracle—and her annoyance at the neediness of bodies fades.

*

Fleur steps out of the shower and towels off. She wandlessly charms away the steam and looks in the mirror. Her hair is too grown out, she thinks, brushing her palm from her crown to the back of her neck. It’s funny: when Ted first buzzed her hair, she had to work to conceal her shock at how different she looked, at how little she recognised herself. Now a fortnight after a fresh buzz, it feels overgrown and troublesome. She finds she prefers the look of it very closely cropped to the look it takes on after a couple of weeks of inattention. She never would have guessed how used to it she could become. She hadn’t made the chop for aesthetic reasons, after all. Yet to her surprise, the longer she spends without hair, with some extra weight, the less concerned she is about her looks. Paradoxically, she thinks she’s never looked hotter. Or, perhaps not hotter, but certainly more… something. It’s weird, this business of having a body. But whatever has shifted in her, her habit of flipping her sheet of hair over her hand in an eye-catching blonde wave is no more. She doesn’t fiddle with her clothing as much—isn’t distracted by straightening pleats or worrying about knicker lines. She feels freer, more at ease.

In the endless hours of quiet, week in and week out, Fleur can’t help the thoughts that enter her mind, unbidden, unwelcome, unwanted, but unavoidable: Was she ever as beautiful as she thought? Did she cut her beauty away with her hair— was that where her Veela magic lay? Or is it more esoteric than that—was she beautiful only because she thought she was? Or because others did? And, if that’s the case, did they think so because of her heritage? Does all this mean that beauty isn’t real, but merely a projection of the imagination? And who’s casting the Projection Charm in the first place? She wears thin this circular ground in her head despite her best efforts to put all such thoughts out to pasture. _What does it matter now?_ she tells herself again and again (and again and again and again). 

She reaches no conclusions, except to realise that Tonks’s gauche look is more than an aesthetic; from the time they met, Fleur thought it was about Tonks’s lack of care for outside standards. Now Fleur knows better: it’s not a manifestation of inherent confidence, but an already always ongoing act of liberation.

Fleur wraps her towel around herself and heads back to their bedroom. Tonks, still in bed, stirs when she enters.

Fleur greets her with a kiss on the end of her nose and a “Bonjour.”

“It is not bon. It is un-bon.”

“Nausea?”

“Don’t even say that word to me. That word is sacked, okay?”

Fleur mimes zipping her mouth shut.

“I’m going to go barf. Meet you in the kitchen afterward?”

“Can I—”

“Don’t make coffee and I’ll call that a result.”

In the kitchen, Fleur makes some acceptably toasted toast for herself, then sets herself to burning and buttering a few slices for Tonks.

When Tonks joins her in the kitchen, she looks alright, if not chipper. Her former boisterousness has not returned to pre-pregnancy levels, which Fleur can’t help but lament. But considering Tonks is greeted each morning by last night’s meal, Fleur doesn’t blame her. Instead she tries to help in ways that aren’t overbearing, tries to anticipate Tonks’s needs. With no first-hand experience, she finds it tricky. Andromeda’s running commentary about how everything they do, eat, and say is bad for the baby doesn’t help, but Fleur has pulled back somewhat from giving Andromeda as good as she gets. There’s a real war raging outside, and Tonks doesn’t need to contend with one in their safe house while her energy is split between resistance efforts and growing a baby.

Fleur brings her a plate of scorched, buttery bread. According to Tonks, toast settles her stomach, so Fleur’s happy to be the resident toast burner. 

“Thank you.” Tonks takes a small bite.

“Not to rush you,” Fleur says, biting into a far paler, marmalade covered slice, “but if you wish to enjoy that without being warned it will turn our baby into a lump of coal, you ought to hurry. Your mother is awake.”

Tonks’s eyes widen and she rips off another bite of toast and pops it into her mouth. “Some things can’t be rushed. It’s only soothing if I don’t have to scarf it down, you know? Nibbles.”

Fleur puts one hand on Tonks’s shoulder. “Tea?”

Tonks shakes her head, chewing. “I’ll take a bowl of cereal, though. Decoy breakfast to preempt mum’s rant about the importance of prenatal nutrition.”

“You would think you were living on junk food. We have been eating nothing but home-cooked meals for months.”

Tonks scoffs good-naturedly while Fleur Summons cereal, milk, a bowl, and a spoon. “I’m not sure cereal and sandwiches count as home cooking.”

“I am pouring this cereal with love,” Fleur narrates. “By _hand_.” She shakes the box of Corn Flakes to illustrate her point. 

“The best part of our eventual victory will be shopping properly again,” Tonks says. “I long for a bowl of Magically Maple Muesli.”

“That can be the first thing we do when this is over,” Fleur vows. “Celebrate with maple syrup.”

“Excellent priorities. Knew I loved you for a reason.” Tonks smiles at Fleur. “I’m feeling a bit better.”

“Magnifique,” Fleur says. “If you’re feeling up to it, we can go out tonight.”

“It’s so weird not being able to change height anymore. Or, like, density.”

“Density?” Fleur laughs, mouth full of sweet, orangey toast. 

“Thickness? Girth? Whatever you want to call it—I can morph my hair.” She turns it a short, curly grey. “My face.” Tonks adds a unibrow for good measure. “I can give myself freckles.” She does. “I can make my arms and legs less muscular, or more.” Her limbs fluctuate between knitting needles and prized hams for a moment. “But I can’t grow or shrink or really change the shape of my torso anymore. Baby seems to like things as they are in that area.” 

“This bothers you?” Fleur asks, sitting down in the empty chair next to Tonks.

“Not really? It’s more like, I guess I didn’t realise how much shifting things had become something I did without realising, reflexively, you know? But now that my ability is mitigated, it’s like I’m more aware of it than ever.”

Fleur absently touches her hair. “That makes sense to me.”

Footsteps sound in the hallway. Ted comes in and beelines for the teapot, piping hot under a charmed cosy. Fleur hasn’t taken to tea in the absence of coffee, but making a pot in the morning, watching Ted, or Sirius, or Remus, or even Andromeda knock back a cuppa feels like… she doesn’t know. But it feels like something.

“You’d best eat that charcoal or ditch it, love, unless you’re up for a row,” Ted counsels Tonks. “Your mum’s in the shower, but she won’t be long.”

“Thanks, Dad.” Tonks smiles and takes another bite.

*

_24 December 1997_

Still with no clue where Harry is or how to find him, Remus and Sirius spend the run-up to Christmas at the house. 

“Apart from anything, it’s disgusting out there,” Remus laments the cold weather, the greater than usual snowfall. 

“Try living in a cave,” Sirius says.

“Right, because werewolf packs are known to live in five-star hotels.”

Fleur likes having them around. Even though Sirius is as irritable as a teenager thanks to the long separation from Harry, he’s still on quipping form, and Remus matches him word for word. Also, Fleur suspects that Remus has a regimen of distracting naps and sex in place that benefits himself as much as keeping the rest of them safe from Sirius’s most baroque moments of pique. She loves Sirius—he’s whip-smart and funny and loyal—but she’s not ignorant of his faults. Anyone in a long-term partnership with him would require an infrastructure for mood management. Then again, Remus has his own penchant for drama, despite being less vengeful and impulsive than Sirius, so it probably goes both ways.

Sirius’s response to Tonks’s news had been, “Alright! More sprogs! I’ve heard that Sirius Black is an excellent godfather,” and not a spluttering, ‘What? How?’ or worse, a rude comment about how surprising it is that _Tonks_ is the pregnant one. (Molly Weasley’s reaction had been the latter, as though she’d been assuming this whole time Fleur was only interested in Tonks for her ability to adopt a penis and give her a deep dicking. (As though it’s any of Molly Weasley business if Tonks _does_.))

“So.” Sirius thumps a fist down on the table after they’ve all polished off bowls of scotch broth on Christmas Eve. “Are we going out tonight?”

“We are,” Tonks answers him on behalf of herself and Fleur. Fleur watches as Tonks’s eyes stay fixed on Sirius, determinedly not flicking to her mother. It might work if Andromeda’s aggression were of the passive variety.

“Must you encourage them, Sirius?” Andromeda asks, clearly despairing of all of them. “Am I the only one who appreciates that she is pregnant?”

“Of course not, Andromeda. But the odds of meeting a Snatcher in a random spot—”

“But they’re not random, are they?” Andromeda points out. “If they were random, that would be different. But you pick high-risk spots—spots near wizarding areas.”

“There is little point in warding areas unlikely to be targeted by the Death Eaters,” Fleur counters.

“Too right,” Sirius agrees. 

“We have to do what we can,” Remus appends.

In delicate tones, Ted adds his two Sickles. “It’s people like me he’s after, Andromeda.”

“Exactly!” Andromeda smacks a hand down on the table in a hostile reimagining of Sirius’s jovial gesture just a minute before. “You are the most at risk of anyone here. Except for perhaps the baby, who, I hasten to add, doesn’t get a say in whether or not you two are putting it in the line of fire.” Despite referring to both of them, Andromeda looks daggers at Fleur, as though she is Tonks’s keeper and not her partner, as if Tonks wasn’t an adult and a professional Dark Mage catcher before Fleur had met her. 

“Wake up and smell the _Crucio_ , Mum!” It’s not customary for Tonks to shout angrily; usually when she raises her voice, it’s in excitement. “If we don’t fight, this baby _has no future_. Do you really want to live holed up here the rest of our lives? And anyway, why should our lives be any more important than Muggle strangers’?” 

“Because those strangers aren’t _my_ only daughter!” Andromeda shrieks. 

Instead of shouting back, Tonks walks over to her mother and wraps her in her arms. “I love you too, Mum. But everyone they murder is someone’s kid.” The point is hard to deny. Andromeda is silent. Tonks squeezes her tighter before letting go. “Now, I’m going to catch forty winks before we head out. I’ll get up around midnight. Fleur, if you would join me, I wish to be spooned.” With that, Tonks leaves the rest of them sitting around the table.

Once she’s gone, Ted says, “I don’t like her being exposed either, Andromeda.”

“None of us do,” Remus adds. “But Tonks is right. Outside, nobody is safe.” 

“She’s nearly in her second trimester now.” Andromeda looks like she might cry. The sight of her holding back tears touches something in Fleur. These are not tears of resentment, not tears of frustration, but tears of desperation and fear. To be sure, Andromeda has not made any meaningful effort to welcome Fleur into the family, but it could not be clearer as she fights to keep her tears from breaking the waterline that her feelings are grounded in concern for her daughter and grandchild. Fleur thinks of her own family. She tries not to, these days. It’s been so long since she’s seen them. They used to be everything to her, before she joined the Order. They still are, but somehow, as she opened her heart to Harry, to Tonks, to Sirius, it’s not as though Fleur’s heart has become stretched thin with caring, but rather like it has opened wider, or deepened, or expanded. She never knew she could care so much—put her life on the line—for people she’s never even seen, people who might be arseholes, for all she knows.

Fleur looks at Andromeda and feels for her as she never has before. 

Before, when it was early days...” Andromeda trails off. “That was dangerous enough as it was! But now she's showing! If a Snatcher noticed, who knows what they would do to her and the baby! And who knows how fragile she and the baby might be; we don't know anything about this! It's not a normal pregnancy—”

Fleur’s compassion dries up. “It is uncommon, not abnormal.” She takes her leave.

*

_25 December 1997_

“Happy Christmas.” Fleur’s been sleeping on her back, and Tonks is astride her hips before she can even open her eyes—certainly far faster than Fleur thought pregnant people moved. “I’m waking you up so that you can give me all my presents.”

A “pft,” makes its way out of Fleur’s mouth. “Bien sur. We’ve all had so much time to shop.”

“I am willing to accept cunnilingus as a present if you are.”

“All my Christmases have come at once.” Fleur grins as Tonks shimmies up Fleur’s body and grabs the headboard.

*

“Happy Christmas, loved ones,” Tonks announces as she and Fleur plonk themselves down among their comrades and kinsmen in the sitting room.

“Shagged out and it’s not yet half nine,” Sirius teases, leaning over from the armchair to ruffle Tonks’s violet bedhead. “Happy Christmas, indeed.”

“Must you act like a teenager, Sirius?” Andromeda asks.

“He must,” Remus answers with dramatic solemnity.

They eat later than usual. Ted makes waffles, which leads to a bizarrely grateful insurrection of sorts when the household clamours to thank him for providing fluffy delight, but equally to scold him for holding out on them. 

Kingsley joins them in the afternoon, and has the tact to bring a tray of homemade Yorkshire puddings—still steaming—along with him. 

“Pregnant!” Tonks shouts at the sight of them. “Hand them over!”

In the evening, the Weasleys come through, minus Bill, who’s begged off the humble festivities. 

“Not feeling well, poor lamb,” Molly tells them. “Said he wanted to stay at the cottage and rest up. Normally we’d invite you over to ours, of course,” Molly says, putting to bed any notions that she is anything less than a consummate hostess. “But as you’re expecting, Tonks, dear…”

When everyone is well fed, they move back to the sitting room and Tonks puts a tape labelled “Weird Christmas” into the cassette player. David Bowie begins serenading them with The Little Drummer Boy.

“This is lovely,” Molly comments, to Fleur’s surprise. She assumed the woman’s taste in music was beyond help. “How far along are you now?” she asks Tonks. “You should be able to find out the sex soon.”

“I’m not sure,” Tonks admits. “I haven’t exactly been able to go to St Mungo’s for a checkup.”

“There are other hospitals,” Molly says.

“Yes, and all of them centralised by the Ministry. They’d know the minute I arrived. Somehow, I can’t see the Death Eaters letting the charges of treason go in light of my being in the family way.”

Molly grimaces, conceding the point. Then adds, “Well, there are other ways to tell the sex, at least. There’s a spell you can do with a spoon.”

“Thank you, Molly, but—” Tonks falters.

“We do not wish to know,” Fleur finishes for her.

“But how will you get everything ready? You’ll need clothes and a nursery.”

Fleur rolls her eyes. “We do not need to know about the baby’s genitals in order to buy clothes.”

“And we won’t have a nursery anyway,” Tonks jumps in. “The baby will stay in our room. We’re not exactly flush with spare rooms at the moment.”

“Oh, but you’ll need to sleep train! What about a magical expansion?”

They chit-chat for a bit, Andromeda joining in. Together she and Molly offer the two of them parenting advice, which is grating, but they also perform a spell that projects the baby’s heartbeat. It’s slow—much slower than the one Fleur can feel when she straddles Tonks and leans forward to put her lips on her neck. But she still thinks it’s the most incredible thing she’s ever heard. The radiance of Tonks’s beam strongly suggests that she agrees. Tonks mutes the music, and when Sirius complains, just casts a Sonorus to compliment Molly and Andromeda’s charm. 

“Is that?” Kingsley says, looking awestruck.

“The heartbeat,” Andromeda affirms.

“Sounding good,” Kingsley says to Tonks.

For a few minutes, everyone just listens. But soon Sirius raises a glass. “To a healthy baby!” he toasts, holding his glass of whisky aloft. 

“A healthy baby,” the rest of them chorus. 

“Bit rude to be toasting when all I can drink is sad, rumless nog,” Tonks jokes. But she grabs her glass of store bought eggnog and takes a sip. 

After the toast, Tonks puts the music back on. Chatter resumes around the room, but the buzz sounds somehow lighter than it had a few minutes earlier. Here and there, some of their gathered number sing a bar or two of the various ‘Weird Christmas’ songs that come on. 

Some hours later, Kingsley says, “Lee and I want to do a broadcast tonight. A show of solidarity, so to speak. Some people won’t be warm tonight, nevermind in good company. No one should feel obligated, but anyone is welcome. Molly, not to put you on the spot, but you’ve not been on before. Or you, Andromeda.”

“Me?” Molly puts a surprised hand to her chest.

“If you’re trying to butter me up in the hopes I’ll stop worrying about my daughter and grandchild—”

“I know that’s not possible,” Kingsley placates. “I worry, too. Tonks is my partner. Every one of us worries about the rest.”

“Hear, hear!” Tonks calls, raising her nog to their partnership, criticism of non-alcoholic toasts apparently forgotten.

“My motives are more pragmatic. Lee and I have been discussing topics for the show—we retread the same ground a lot, which is fine, but we’d also like to include as much useful information as possible. The Hogwarts staff can’t come on for obvious reasons, but you both have valuable experience with practical healing.”

“No lie,” Tonks agrees. “Mum got _me_ to adulthood in one piece.”

“No mean feat.” Ted smiles at Andromeda.

“And us,” Fred praises. 

“Go on, Mum!” George encourages.

“We can call you Regina,” Fred piles on.

Molly and Andromeda share a look, both plainly surprised—and chuffed—to be asked.

“If you think we can help,” Andromeda says, “just call me Rowena.”

After that, some of the Weasleys go home and Kingsley, Molly, and Andromeda leave to join Lee. The rest of them stay put. Ted turns on the wireless and begins twirling the dial this way and that. They all want to hear Andromeda and Molly’s big moment.

“I wasn’t sure they’d agree,” Remus says while Ted searches. “Considering.”

“You don’t know Andromeda,” Sirius says, as though he wasn’t estranged from her for nearly twenty years. “She’s not one to sit things out. She’s just protective.”

“Aye,” Ted agrees. “You don’t know what it did to her to lose her sisters. The thought of losing anyone else… It’s her worst nightmare.”

“Yeah, Mum’s a gooder,” Tonks admits. “Even if she is a suffocating, finishing-school arsehole sometimes.”

The broadcast starts, and they fall silent to listen. Fleur is surprised to learn a few new spells. Perhaps she shouldn’t be—she recalls the sound of their baby’s heartbeat. 

As they speak incantations and describe wand movements, ‘Regina’ is quick to remind the listeners that a Knut of prevention is worth a Galleon of cure. “Too right!” Lee agrees. It couldn’t be clearer from his voice that he’s thrilled to have the Weasley and Black matriarchs with him.

When Lee and Kingsley delve into the news portion of the programme, Fleur scurries into the kitchen to grab something. She considers Disillusioning it, but instead grabs the tea cosy to cover it—it’s small, and anyway, there's something about the clashing swatches of fabric on the cosy that just seem more Tonks.

When Fleur returns to the sitting room, Tonks is on the floor stretching out her hips.

“Is everyone this limber when they are pregnant?” Fleur wonders out loud.

“More important than ever to stay nimble!” Tonks says, reaching one hand over her head and leaning to follow the motion. “I don’t want to be one of those pregs that whinges all the time.” She starts stretching the other side. “Though I do reserve the right to use my experience of pregnancy and labour to guilt our kid if it’s a wanker.”

Everyone laughs, and for a minute Potterwatch becomes background noise and it actually feels like Christmas—not like everyone is doing their best to _make it_ feel like Christmas.

“Cold hands?” Ted asks, seemingly apropos of nothing.

“What’s with the cosy?” Sirius elaborates.

“It’s for you,” Fleur tells Tonks.

“But we already exchanged gifts.” Her voice is so earnest—it certainly doesn’t suggest at all what those gifts were, though Sirius nudges Remus in the ribs and slots two finger-Vs together while Remus mutters, “Yes, I get it, Sirius.”

Tonks drops her stretch, knee-walks clumsily over to Fleur’s chair, and reaches out two hands, cupped like a bowl, as though Fleur is a sir from whom she’s asking for more. Fleur laughs and whisks the cosy away with a flourish like a server pulling aside a silver lid to reveal a gourmet meal. Which, she supposes, is appropriate.

“Oh! Oats!”

“Oats?” Ted sounds amused.

“I love oats!” Tonks assures Fleur.

“As if I would get you oats for Christmas.” Fleur opens the swing-top of the large jar and moves it close to Tonks’s face. “Smell,” she instructs.

Tonks nearly shoves her nose in the jar, forgoing dainty wafting in favour of eager enthusiasm. If Tonks’s father weren’t sitting across the room, and if Tonks weren’t carrying a baby, Fleur would pounce on her.

“Maple!” Tonks shrieks, startling everyone, save Fleur. “You made me Magically Maple Muesli!”

“I doubt it will taste the same,” Fleur says. “It will be better.”

Tonks gathers some muesli in her fist and shoves it in her mouth. For a moment, she just closes her eyes an chews. 

“Well?” Sirius asks. “Is maple the flavor of love 1998?”

“If being on the lam means always eating this hippie mix, I say it’s worth it,” Tonks offers, by way of an answer, before going in for another fistful.

*

_31 December 1997_

By News Year’s Eve, the muesli is gone and Tonks is demanding more. Fleur promises to make another batch after her next trip to the shops.

“That doesn’t sound as though I’ll be eating any tonight,” Tonks observes. “What even is the point of being up the duff if I can’t have muesli when I want it? Is muesli too much to ask?”

“I’m just glad you’ve stopped eating your breakfast charred,” Andromeda says. No one says anything, intent as they are on preserving their conspiracy of silence with regards to Tonks’s breakfast choices. It’s just easier on everyone.

Some time before midnight, Fleur claims her turn with the cassette player and pops in Spice World. She’s been hearing Spice Up Your Life every time she’s ‘round the shops since October. She sits next to Tonks on the carpet and crosses her legs.

“New Spice Girls!” Tonks exclaims as the first few noisy sounds fill the room. “Excellent!” Tonks says. “The Muggles only ever play like two songs on the radio. I want to hear the rest.”

“Me too,” Fleur says. 

“You should play this at the end of the next Potterwatch, Kingsley,” Tonks advises. “That would be a true public service.”

“Wouldn’t take much to convince Lee,” Kingsley reflects. “He’s always going on about the importance of keeping morale up.”

“But this is just noise,” Andromeda condemns.

“Build-a-bands are embarrassing,” Sirius adds. ‘What a bunch of phoneys.”

“I’ll remember that next time you want to listen to my New Kids on the Block albums, Holden Caulfield,” Remus says, then ducks a pillow Sirius lobs at his head.

“The Monkeys were fun,” Ted adds.

“They were,” Andromeda drops her head on Ted’s shoulder.

“You just can’t handle the aggressive femme sexuality of the Spice Girls, Sirius,” Tonks accuses.

“Hey! I _love_ aggressive femme sexuality! I saw Blondie twice before I was thrown in the slammer, thank you very much.”

“It’s true.” Remus has a fond, nostalgic look on his face.

“Urgh!” Tonks groans and drops her head backwards for good measure. “I miss going to gigs. I would kill to see a show.”

“We _are_ at war,” Fleur says, and Sirius snorts at her gallows humour, but the room goes quiet after that.

 

A mellower track comes on. Fleur hasn’t heard it before. Tonks stretches out one socked foot and nudges one of Fleur’s knees. Fleur unknots her legs, leaning back on outstretched arms, and Tonks moves over, lying down with her head in Fleur’s lap and yawning. Fleur loves this—has loved this since it was just the two of them, back in the flat—the easy way they move with one another.

“Not a bad way to spend the next year.” Tonks turns her head and plants a kiss on Fleur’s leg.

“Running for our lives?” Andromeda asks.

“Hiding for our lives, surely?” Kingsley corrects.

“Six of one,” Andromeda parries.

“I meant cuddling with Fleur, but thanks for ruining the moment.” She looks up at Fleur to share a longsuffering look, but suddenly, her eyes go wide and she gasps.

“What?” Fleur asks, alarmed. 

“I think the baby just kicked! Here.” She grabs one of Fleur’s arms, unbalancing her a bit, and pulls her hand down to her stomach. The rest of the family get out of their chairs and head over to sit around them. Fleur feels like Joseph with Mary—Tonks in her lap, surrounded by adoring faces. After a few minutes of gliding Fleur’s hand over her stomach, the baby strikes again.

Fleur looks at Tonks, eyes huge.

“Pretty cool, right?” Tonks says, smiling.

“You’ll be singing a different tune when you can’t sleep for kicking.”

“Kindly shut up, mother,” Tonks requests in her most polite voice. 

For a few minutes, Tonks keeps guiding Fleur’s hand over her stomach, but the baby seems disinclined to perform on demand.

“Stop hogging baby milestones!” Sirius demands, scooching closer, though Remus tries to scruff him and pull him back. Sirius swats Remus’s hand away. “This baby’s the only good thing going, these days.”

“So glad I could provide you all with amusement.” Tonks sticks her tongue out at him.

When the tape needs to be flipped, Fleur catches Remus’s eye and looks over to the cassette player. The small digital clock reads 12:07.

“Bonne année,” Fleur tells Tonks, and bends down awkwardly to kiss her on the mouth. Around the room, everyone wishes everyone else a ‘Happy New Year,’ and every iteration of people share kisses on the mouth or pecks on the cheek.

“I don’t care what ‘they’ say.” Sirius employes air quotes to emphasise his incredulity. “‘They’ are idiots, whoever they are. We are not spending all of 1998 in hiding. Harry will—” he falters. 

“Harry will defeat him,” says Fleur, certain.

“We’ll stand with him when he does,” Kingsley appends.

“Wild Thestrals...” Remus vows.


	6. Chapter 6

_February 1998_

Sirius’s words on New Year’s turn out to be prophetic. As winter progresses, the most eventful thing is Tonks starting to look visibly pregnant. Before January, before Fleur could see the hard evidence every day, it must not have truly sunk in. Now, when Fleur shows Tonks how to expand the waist on her jeans and jacket before they go out warding, Fleur finds herself sympathising with Andromeda. She knows Tonks can handle herself. But she also knows shit happens—shit that shouldn’t—and she wants her partner and their baby safe. It’s not that she cares more about the baby, or values Tonks more as an incubator than a person, it’s that growing a baby has put Tonks’s mortalness in front of Fleur’s eyes in a way she can’t miss or choose to ignore. Tonks always wears her heart on her sleeve, but Fleur still isn’t used to seeing her as vulnerable. On top of developing persistent hip pain, the further along she gets, the more Tonks whispers to Fleur about the nature of the pregnancy when they lay together at night. “I can’t stop thinking about how this must have happened to other people who didn’t think anyone would believe them. Who’d have thought barely being able to leave the house would have such a weird fringe benefit.”

Andromeda doesn’t drop the issue of Tonks putting herself and the baby in danger, but she doesn’t get worse, as Fleur expected. She even continues to appear on Potterwatch occasionally, proving Ted and Sirius right about her character. During her last appearance, Lee prompted her to speak about her experience of estrangement from her pureblood family due to her love match. 

“So you weren’t cast out—you rejected it. Is that right?”

“I wouldn’t say I rejected,” Andromeda said. “My politics weren’t terribly lofty at the time. I met my husband, and we fell in love. I wasn’t going to let that pass me by. At the time I was more hurt that my family couldn’t get over it for my sake than I was righteously indignant that they saw my husband—and all Muggleborns—as somehow lesser than purebloods. The anger about the injustice of that came later.”

“So even for you, it was an unlearning process?” Lee asked.

Andromeda laughed. “You could call it that.”

It’s not all smooth sailing, though. When Tonks reaches six months, Andromeda starts channeling the energy she used to put into shaming Tonks for leaving their safe house towards insisting she seek medical expertise.

“We’ve been over this, Mum. Where am I supposed to go? St Mungo’s? The Ministry would get wind of it in a heartbeat and then I’d be giving birth in Azkaban, if I’m lucky. Forget it.”

“St Mungo’s isn’t the only option,” Andromeda insists. “If only we could get in touch with Poppy.”

“It is too risky to contact Hogwarts,” Fleur reminds her. “For all considered. Sending a Patronus or an owl to anyone there would put them under grievous scrutiny. Though I agree with your mother.”

“Pull the other one,” Andromeda snarks.

Fleur ignores the remark. “You should see a Healer, for your sake and the baby’s. This has gone on long enough.”

“Look, I’m fine. The morning sickness cleared up months ago. All I have now are sore hips and the horn, and I don’t hear you complaining about the latter.”

“You cannot shut me up by mentioning sex,” Fleur informs Tonks. “I am not English. I believe that you are well, but we cannot know about the baby without running very delicate tests. If we could get to a library, I would research them and try myself, but as it is—”

“Pass,” Tonks says. “I am trying to appreciate everyone’s concern, but I’ve had just about enough of being treated like I’m sick, thanks.”

“It’s not necessarily about sickness or symptoms,” Ted says. “Checkups are important to make sure all’s well with the baby. Your mother’d had a handful by the time she was six months.”

“If anyone has a suggestion that isn’t likely to put me in more danger than I would be if I just keep lying low, I’m all ears.”

“I think it’s rather obvious,” Ted responds. “We take you to Muggle hospital. I’ve got your birth cert and NHS Number in a wee box upstairs.”

*

The following day, the lot of them, glamoured, and Tonks with an altered face, Apparate to Ysbyty Gwynedd in Bangor. To the Order’s knowledge, there are no Death Eater haunts in Northern Wales, and the nearest magical village is miles away from the hospital.

It's not easy getting Tonks seen to; emergency walk-ins are for, well, emergencies, but without a GP they don't know where else to get help. They're told they need to go elsewhere, get a referral. But Andromeda adopts her snootiest stance and takes all comers, and, like a battering ram of icy civility insists Tonks's way through the process of getting a routine check up. It's not smooth though; in addition to the griping about 'not standard procedure,' at every level from triage to exam room, Tonks is ritually humiliated for not getting medical attention sooner. She offers “I didn’t know” as a flimsy excuse for the delay, but they seem to think anyone who doesn’t know they’re pregnant is an idiot worthy of ridicule. Fleur finds herself allied with Andromeda against the hospital staff. Tonks doesn’t need a champion, but getting the same lecture over and over would do anyone’s head in, and besides, Fleur doesn’t mind making a couple of pricks cry. Andromeda seems to agree. After moving rooms several times, demanding no less than three medical license numbers to lodge official complaints, disparaging the general lack of professionalism as loudly as possible, and assuring the last doctor they see that they’ll be writing the hospital’s board, Tonks is given a clean bill of health, an ultrasound photo, and a stack of pamphlets about the dos and don’ts of gestating a new human.

When they return home, Sirius is standing in the kitchen, frantic. “Ever heard of leaving a bloody note!” Sirius demands. Remus looks pale.

“Oh, as if you both don’t come and go as you please for your own mysterious reasons,” Andromeda returns.

“Here’s our baby,” Tonks says, handing over the ultrasound print out. 

“You went to a Muggle hospital?” Remus asks, interested.

“Ted put his foot down,” Fleur says. 

“But I was vindicated in the end. I’m a picture of health. So’s this one.” Tonks points to her stomach.

“Lad or lass?” Sirius asks.

Tonks shrugs. “Baby’s junk will be revealed as it exits mine.”

“Due date, then?” Remus inquires. “Or is that also to remain shrouded in secrecy?”

“First of May,” Andromeda says, beaming in spite of her fears for them all. “We’re really going to be grandparents, Ted.”

“Are you going back to the hospital when the time comes?” Remus asks.

“A different one, just in case,” Fleur answers. “We took copies of her records, so it should not be a problem. Well, no more than today.”

“Oh?” Remus takes the bait, at which point Tonks tells him that Muggle medical professionals are just as turdly as Healers, and Fleur and Andromeda take off ranting about incompetence and a lack of common human decency. In the end, Andromeda summons parchment and a quill and sits down with Fleur to draft a furious letter.

“If only we could send them a Howler,” Andromeda says, punctuating a sentence with an exclamation point so aggressive it blots the paper.

“They deserve worse,” Fleur fumes.

“I just wish I could see the looks on the faces of the hospital’s board when they receive a parchment letter written with a quill,” Ted remarks quietly to Remus.

*

_March 1998_

As far as Fleur is concerned, it’s a fact of nature that things are supposed to lighten up as winter turns to spring. In the present political climate, however, the opposite is the case.

Though Potterwatch continues, their broadcasts devote increasing amounts of time to listing the dead, the disappeared, the arrested. 

“We can’t keep up like this,” Tonks says to Kingsley and Fleur one afternoon in the kitchen. “We have to start _really_ fighting. Go on the offensive.”

‘You’re not wrong,” Kingsley agrees. “I’ve been thinking about our options since New Year’s. As it is, we’ve effectively lost. But it’s not as though we lost a fair election. He's a dictator. He and his followers can be taken out. We need to do this the only fashioned way.”

“You mean a coup d’êtat?” Fleur asks.

“I don’t know what I mean, exactly,” Kingsley admits. “But Tonks is right: one way or another, we need to start taking the fight to them. I know none of us want to think of ourselves as killers, but we have to start taking out his support system.”

“Tackling Big V will be hard enough without his growing support base.” Tonks sighs.

“We cannot despair. Many of his ‘supporters’ are in name only—they are coerced and will turn on him if they think their odds are good enough.”

“You’re right, Fleur.” Kingsley leans back in his chair. “We need to better our odds.”

*

Having a plan is all well and good. Executing it is another matter. But they still have a resistance—aside from Dumbledore, all members of the Order redux are still, miraculously, alive. A thought flashes across Fleur’s mind that, in fact, that isn’t a miracle. She and Sirius and Dumbledore played no small part. Creating a safe mode of movement through their network has kept them all from being sitting ducks. On top of that, their members are not rubes—they are all clever, magically skilled, and, perhaps most importantly, driven by conviction that Voldemort must be destroyed, that the world order he would build is sick and cannot be left unchallenged. Harry more than anyone embodies this, albeit in absentia. It heartens Fleur that the same boy who bested her as a fourteen-year-old, who faced Voldemort alone and came back alive—who brought Cedric’s body back despite the fact that he was fleeing for his life, for fuck’s sake—is on the case. If he can find the strength to keep running, to keep working on whatever it is he’s working on, she too can do her part.

However, the reality remains that they are few. Sirius and Remus are still gone at least half the time, searching for Harry and doing whatever else it is they do.

They develop a plan. Mundungus and Mad-Eye (whom Fleur hasn’t seen in months) and Kingsley undertake reconnaissance. They know who their enemies are. And they have a small advantage—the Death Eaters and their collaborators already think themselves victorious, and so make no efforts to hide their movements, their activities, their whereabouts. With Voldemort in control of the Ministry and of Hogwarts, with the majority of magical Britain too shit scared to rise up, the Order hasn’t a prayer, few as they are, of triumph in a out-and-out fight. They need to be crafty, surreptitious, pick off the members of his inner circle. Potterwatch can report victories, stir up hope, garner more allies so that when the time comes for a pitched battle—and none of them kid themselves that they can avoid it—they have a fighting chance, even if the odds are astronomical as they are. Lee reminds them each time he takes to the air that every time Harry has faced Voldemort, he has come out on top. It is true, Fleur knows, that he has always had support of one kind or another. In the absence of his mother’s dying protection, lost when Harry came of age; in the absence of Dumbledore, the only one Voldemort ever feared, it us up to the Order to ensure Harry comes out on top this time. Over two years ago, Fleur reminded Harry that she owes him. She does not forget.

*

“Hardly reconnaissance, really,” Kingsley says over a debrief. “Anyone could do it.”

“I doubt that,” Tonks says. “I notice you’re here to scheme and not taking a long dirt nap.”

“Morbid,” Andromeda tuts.

“I don’t know how much more we can learn from watching,” Kingsley continues. “We’ve locked down the locations of some of the biggest players. The Malfoys, the Lestranges, Pettigrew, and Himself are all holed up in Malfoy Manor—with, we believe, prisoners. Unfortunately, there’s no point in targeting the Manor just yet. From what we’ve seen, and from what Mundungus has heard through the grapevine…”

Kingsley continues, identifying top marks. He and Tonks discuss options and prioritise. 

The following day, Mad-Eye joins them around the table. Though every person in the house is willing to raise their wand for the cause, the Auror contingent has taken the lead—fairly ironic considering Moody was forced to take an early retirement and Kingsley himself was nearly arrested for treason just months ago. Still, when it comes to tactics, they are unmatched. Fleur is grateful that, if their side is to have so few players, they have the ones they do. 

While the ex-Aurors plan their movements, Fleur, Bill, Remus, and Sirius take point on ensuring they have their magical arsenal in place. If they do this right, it won’t be about dueling—about thinking on their feet. It will come down to the right spell at the right moment.

The group debates the merits of using a trap, black bagging, or a quiet, well placed poison quill.

“I don’t want to murder anyone,” Tonks says, sounding her reservations for the first time.

“Nor do any of us,” Remus sooths, “but—”

“Speak for yourself, Moony,” Sirius says baldly. “You didn’t have to listen to some of these come stains screaming day in and day out for twelve years about Old Mouldy’s eventual triumph.”

“In all seriousness, we need to decide now what to do,” Kingsley says. “No one will be made to do anything they don’t agree to. But at the end of the day, if we lure someone into a trap or do a snatch and grab, unless we plan on setting up somewhere to detain them afterward, we’re going to have to deal with them. Let’s face it now: we don’t have the resources for that.”

“Not to mention the possibility of escape could land us worse off than we are now,” Moody says flatly.

“I can’t execute anyone,” Tonks says, flat out. “It’s different in a duel, when you’re defending yourself. I can’t—” she shudders and looks like she might be sick. It’s the first time Fleur has ever seen her opt out of anything, and, considering the topic at hand, it makes Fleur’s heart flood with such admiration that her chest actually aches with the force of it.

“I don’t like it,” Moody concedes gruffly “Not high minded. Not what Dumbledore would have done. But he’s gone and we have to get out of this.”

“I’m with Mad-Eye,” says Sirius.

“As Sirius goes...” Remus appends, as though there was any doubt.

“Then we have our hit-crew,” Kingsley says. “I don’t envy you.”

“Still leaves the question of tactic.”

“Case-by-case basis.” Tonks grimaces. “This won’t be one size fits all.”

“Who’s first, then?”

“Yaxley is high up in the Ministry now, and, unlike Thicknesse, he isn’t under Imperius. When we target Thicknesse, we’ll need to decide how to deal with him. There’s a good chance he’s innocent.”

“Yaxley is a pig.” Tonks spits. “Lech tried to corner my in the lift at work once. ”

Fleur touches her shoulder gently and feels Kingsley’s hand on top of her own. He says he didn’t know, but wishes he were surprised.

“It’s okay,” Tonks tells them. “I mean, it’s not, obviously. But don’t worry, the fucker was sneezing bats for a week.”

“Easily baited, then,” Moody surmises pragmatically, shifting the conversation back to schematics. 

Suddenly, Fleur feels eight sets of eyes move to her. “It sounds like they are playing my song.”

*

_April 1998_

In April, as Tonks’s due date approaches, they receive the first news of Harry in months—more than news, in point of fact. Bill comes through to get Sirius and Remus one day; Harry, he says, is at Shell Cottage with Hermione, Ron, Luna Lovegood, Garrick Ollivander, Dean Thomas, and Griphook, one of Fleur’s former colleagues. Sirius and Remus Move House immediately; the rest clamour to follow, but Bill stops them. 

“Hermione has been tortured,” he reveals. “She needs rest—Mum is there seeing to her and the prisoners—Griphook and Ollivander are in bad shape too.”

“And Harry?” Fleur asks. 

“Galvanised. I’m sorry, but I can’t tell you anything. I have nothing to tell. He says other than Remus and Sirius he can’t say what their mission is. He says he loves Potterwatch, except the name—“

“I’ll be sure to tell Kingsley,” Tonks riffs.

“—but he’s got to get on with his mission. He hasn’t said, but I’m sure they’re plotting something major and I don’t know how long he’ll stay.”

“If Harry continues, so do we. You will tell him we are at his disposal, I trust?” Fleur asks Bill.

“He knows. And he says congratulations, by the way.”

Fleur smiles. “Until he calls on us, we go on. It is up to us to make sure he is in a good enough position to do what he has to when the time comes.”

*

_30 April 1998_

Fleur doesn’t wake up this morning, because she never fell asleep last night. The sleep of the righteous is absent for those plotting murder.

Normally she would head downstairs, brew tea, make some breakfast for her and Tonks. But she just stays in bed. She doesn’t want to do any of the things she has to do today. She needs to lure a man to his death. A terrible man, to be sure—a murderer, a pure-blood supremacist, a proponent of genocide—but still, technically, a person. Fleur remembers the loss of her hair—formerly a grounding force in her life. She thinks she’d rather feel ugly on the outside than the inside, and she isn’t sure if that would have been true two years ago. She chuckles mirthlessly at the notion of growing up, of her priorities maturing, just in time for her to appreciate the scale of how amoral she’ll have to become to carry out this deed.

Tonks flops over in the bed, still sleeping, albeit fitfully. Fleur heads to the toilet. With an empty bladder and clean teeth, she comes back to the bedroom, crawling back into bed, as though the covers will act as a barrier between her and the day ahead.

Tonks groans.

“Tonks?” Fleur puts a hand on her back and rubs gently. “Are you in pain?”

“I have a gut hurt,” Tonks complains. “It’s probably trapped gas.”

“Fetal position?” Fleur suggests.

“I can move my own gas, thanks,” Tonks snaps.

“Sorry,” Fleur says, and then feels suddenly wet.

“Oh!” Tonks cries. “Shit! MUM!”

Andromeda barrels into the room second later. “What is it?” she asks, looking around, wand at the ready.

“Her water broke,” Fleur says. It looks like Tonks is riding out some pain.

“Ted!” Andromeda calls again, but he’s already at the door. “She’s in labour.”

Fleur realises she’s just sitting here, in Tonks’s amniotic fluid, doing nothing while Tonks has started delivering their baby. Instantly, she jumps out of bed in her pants and a Blur t-shirt, and it almost feels like her spirit leaves her body at the same time: she’s reacting to what’s going on, but it’s all automatic, like her brain and body are on Muggle autopilot. The thought crosses her mind that this must be what it feels like to have an out of body experience. Yet she hears herself say, “I’ll help her get dressed and out of bed. Ted, can you gather whatever she’ll need for a Muggle hospital?”

To Fleur’s fury, the staff at this hospital are just as awful as the last. Several insist that it must be a false labour because it’s Tonks’s first child “and primigravidas never deliver on time, let alone early.”

“Check on her!” Fleur roars. The triage nurse and several nearby folks in the waiting room jump.

“Miss, I realise your sister—”

Though her mind is still feeling oddly distant from her body, Fleur is angry enough to feel her face flush with rage-blood. 

Andromeda steps forward, coming between Fleur and the nurse while Tonks groans, gripping the arms of a nearby chair. “They aren’t sisters. They are partners. My daughter is in labour. Help her.” She leaves no room for argument, channeling her snobbiest Black ancestors and pulling the facial equivalent of a full stop.

They get to a room, and Fleur barely registers the relief that floods her that she’s been given a reprieve on becoming an accessory to murder, at least for a day. She can consider the poetic cyclicality of a murder following a birth later. She’s sure she’ll never be able to stop thinking about it.

Fleur has heard a lot of people complain about their labours over the years. Pain potions, magically maneuvering babies in breech position, contractions that last for days. She imagined herself standing at Tonks’s side, having the bones in her hands shattered as she fed her ice chips. It’s not like that at all. The nurse gets Tonks in place, and says only two people are permitted to stay in the room. Tonks yells she wants Ted to stay, but he acquiesces to Andromeda and Fleur.

The nurse does some cursory, reasonably uninvasive tests with bizarre-looking Muggle instruments, all while Tonks groans more and more loudly. Fleur begins to panic, and the feeling is odd, considering the distance between her mind, body, and spirit just now. She’s sure if this woman knew Tonks, knew what a goer she is, she’d realise how alarming this is.

The nurse heads out to fetch a doctor to run further tests. “He’ll examine you and determine whether this is a false labour,” she says. Fleur hates her. She can kill this woman for practice.

“Did you not just examine her?” Fleur demands to the woman’s back as she departs, chasing after her for answers, leaving Tonks with her mother. As she berates the nurse all the way down the hall, Fleur hears a mighty wail. She runs back to the room. 

“She’s crowning!” Andromeda yells. “We need a doctor!”

Another nurse runs into the room, calling for calm. She seems to be made of different stuff than her colleague, however. She immediately sizes up the situation and runs to Tonks’s aid, whispering instructions, words of encouragement, and cooing “You’re doing so well” interchangeably. Her words sound more like a well-worn mantra, and though they are intended for Tonks, they comfort Fleur—as though that matters right now! For the first time, the situation seems in hand.

Not three minutes later, a baby cry resounds in the room, the nurse lays the baby on Tonks’s chest and tells her “It’s a girl.” 

Tonks wraps her in her arms like she’d the most precious thing in the world. Fleur looks at them and would swear she can feel the mental, physical, emotional, and spiritual aspects of her being slam back together. Tonks and their baby together is the most staggering thing Fleur’s ever seen. She wants to climb into the bed with them, to scoop them up and never let go, to take care of them until Tonks recovers, and then to take care of their new baby—their new fucking baby! It doesn’t feel real yet, despite the evidence in Tonks’s arms—together. But she’s sure Tonks is aching and doesn’t want to hurt her, so she resists the urge and just stays where she is, right at their side next to the bed. After a few minutes of watching them, stroking the baby’s hands and sharing remarks with Tonks about extremely important things like how impossibly tiny the baby’s fingernails are, the nurse reaches for the baby, apologising to Tonks profusely, but assuring her that routine checks are essential, that she’ll bring her back soon. 

“Don’t let her out of your sight!” Tonks yells at Fleur, who obeys instantly, though she’s loath to leave Tonks behind. 

A few more hours pass in a flurry. The neonatal ward seems to get wind of what’s happened, because suddenly they have doctors to spare. Andromeda is assuring them all they won’t be letting this pass. “There will be sackings.” 

But this time, Fleur lets her handle it, because a nurse brings back their baby, hands her to Tonks, and pronounces her “perfect.” 

“It’s a good job she’s bald, or we’d be passing her off as a medical oddity,” Tonks says when they have privacy. 

After the irregular delivery, Tonks has to stay in the hospital for the night. Only one guest is allowed overnight, so the crew trundles out, leaving Fleur alone to cradle their baby while Tonks sleeps. 

Fleur can’t sit still. She paces the room, taking care to walk quietly as she holds the baby close to her chest. Fleur’s cheeks hurt from smiling at their daughter and she can’t stop brushing the pad of her thumb gently back and forth over the shell of her teeny ear. Her face is still wrinkled and scrunchy, but Fleur can see Tonks in parts of it, and herself in others, mixed together alongside features that look utterly unique to this magnificent little human. The nurse was right—she is perfect. 

They’ll have to choose a name. 

*

_1 May 1998_

Tonks and the baby are in bed, nursing, back at home after a short period of observation.

“I suppose you’re not considering Nymphadora Junior?” Fleur asks cheekily, doing her best to channel Sirius in his absence. They sent word to Shell Cottage, but Bill says Harry, Remus, Sirius, Hermione, Ron, and, inexplicably, Griphook, left that morning before dawn, leaving the others to convalescence.

“Don’t even joke about that,” Tonks says in a serious voice.

Every Order member who’s not AWOL pops in at least once to see the baby. Even Moody comes. Fleur knows he has a sweet spot for Tonks, but she can see in his face that he’s not just here for her sake. 

After giving Tonks his best, and, to Fleur’s surprise, taking a photo of Tonks, Fleur, and the baby for his album, Moody beckons Fleur to the kitchen, where Kingsley is waiting. “This doesn’t change anything. We go on, Delacour: you and me. Tomorrow.”

“Yes,” Fleur agrees.

Fleur feels jolted back to her body fully for the first time since Tonks’s water broke. It’s painful. She doesn’t know how she ever stood it before. 

“Fleur, if you want out, say so now. We’ll regroup and come up with a plan B,” Kingsley assures her.

In some kind of transcendental instant, every feeling Fleur has about Tonks and their daughter upper-cuts her in the heart and the guts. She shakes her head no. “I will not change my mind.”

*

It’s nearly midnight, and between the pre-murder insomnia and the baby, Fleur gives up sleep as a bad job. She thinks of acting as bait with purple bags under her eyes, and gives thanks, for the first time in months, to be a part-Veela.

She’s rocking the baby in her arms. Tonks needs rest. Fleur suggested brewing a potion to bring on lactation so that they can both nurse and, thus, sleep (occasionally (theoretically)), but they aren’t in a position to buy ingredients, never mind visit an apothecary to buy a pre-brew. All the more reason to end this war.

Aside from dodging the insistence of the others that they really ought to name their baby, Tonks and Fleur haven’t actually discussed a name. They had nine months to do it, but never did. In retrospect, late-night conversations about the baby were few, and Fleur has never been the kind of person who sat around naming hypothetical children. Really, she never properly considered being a parent. Sure, she assumed she would be—it’s so standard, so normalised, people mention it offhandedly, like it’s a dead cert. Even she and Tonks had talked once, albeit jokingly, about the possibility, but the point was so academic at the time, the larger issue had been living through the war and building some life that they could truly call _theirs_. 

But here she is. Their magic baby.

“Je vais te faire un bisou,” Fleur whispers, kissing her forehead. She smells so good it doesn’t make sense. Do all babies have skin so soft? And she keeps changing! Her face is constantly in flux, despite the fact that she spends most of her time sleeping. Fleur’s not sure if she’s changing her own features, or if it’s just how newborns are, but it seems like every twelve hours she looks like someone new: Tonks, Gabrielle, Ted, grand-père, Andromeda, Sirius, and, according to the latter two, various family members they hate but grudgingly admit were lookers. Fleur doesn’t give a fuck who they were—the nurse was right, this baby is perfect.

Fleur’s lips are on her daughter's forehead when Bill bellows up the stairs, “IT’S HAPPENING!” His shriek is almost inhuman. 

It scares the bejesus out of Fleur. “Putain de fuck!” she curses in Franglais as she jumps in surprise, holding the baby, and a rush of adrenaline courses through her at the thought she almost dropped their daughter after only two days on the job. The baby starts wailing in Fleur’s arms.

“BILL WEASLEY!” Andromeda shouts back—perhaps hearing the baby’s cries and knowing she’s already been woken, or perhaps simply furious beyond the point of reason. “CIRCE WEPT! WE HAVE A NEWBORN IN THIS HOUSE!” 

“HARRY’S AT HOGWARTS! WE NEED TO GET THERE _NOW_!” Bill yells, ignoring Andromeda’s remonstrance.

In Fleur’s arms, their baby keeps screaming.

“What the fuck is going on?” Tonks demands, sitting up.

Tonks throws the covers off and she and Fleur head downstairs slowly but surely; it’s only been a day, and Tonks is still sore despite a remarkably healthy delivery, under the circumstances. 

Andromeda and Ted are mere steps behind them. In the sitting room, Bill is frantic, pacing, sweating, running his fingers through his hair and tugging on it. “It’s on. It’s fucking on. We need to get to Hogwarts. Here’s the deal: Apparate to the Hog’s Head. Aberforth will give you further instructions.”

“How do we know this isn’t a trap?” Tonks demands.

“Word came directly from Neville Longbottom. Harry’s at Hogwarts. You-Know-Who knows. We need to go now to mount a defense. The teachers—Dumbledore’s teachers—are with us. And the upper-year allies. It’s not lost.”

He’s gone without another word.

“Mum, take the baby. Fleur, put some trousers on and let's go. Now.”

“Absolutely not.” Andromeda says. “You gave birth _yesterday_! You have a _newborn_! This is for others to fight.”

“If everyone with kids sat it out, Mum—” Tonks begins.

“No, Tonks.” Andromeda’s use of her preferred name seems to shock Tonks into silence. “Not all parents have a one-day-old baby! It’s not happening! I’m not fucking around here.”

“I agree with your mother, Dora— Er, Tonks,” Ted says.

“Je suis desolée, but as do I,” Fleur admits. “I do not want to tell you what to do. Especially to avoid the fight! But you are not recovered. And she needs you.”

“We’ll fight on your behalf,” Ted says stoically.

“We will take heart in the knowledge you are waiting for us,” Fleur appends.

“No,” Tonks says. “I can’t sit here not fighting, not even knowing!” 

“Know this,” Fleur tells her, “we will come home.”

“No dead lesbians.” Tonks bursts into sobs.

“No dead lesbians,” Fleur repeats, choking it out through a thick throat. “I will come back and we can fight over a name.”

*

They do not, in point of fact, fight over a name. But they do return. There are losses—heavy losses. When Voldemort is gone—when Harry, that beautiful boy, ends him—Fleur returns to Tonks immediately, bleeding, bruised, cursed, but alive. She needs Tonks to know she’s alive, that her parents are. That Remus and Sirius are, and Kingsley. And Harry. She needs to tell her, through tears, that Fred is gone, and Mad-Eye. And others. So many others. Fleur recognised some of their faces from the Yule Ball. Others were not familiar to her, but people still wept over their bodies, and Fleur weeps when she thinks about it. She thinks of her own family, out of harm’s way, and cries harder.

She climbs into their bed to tell Tonks, and it’s fucked to lie there, bracketing their newborn, to feel such joy and love when she looks at her tiny form, while also reeling, physically exhausted, magically drained, and emotionally wrecked.

Tonks cries, too. When Andromeda and Ted return, they curl up at the foot of the bed. Not destroyed, not defeated, but despondent. Together the five of them hold a silent vigil. Eventually, they fall asleep there. But the baby cares nothing for their grief and demands to be fed, to be changed. Tonks and Fleur take her to Ted and Andromeda’s room, leaving them to get some sleep in their own.

“The old switcheroo.” Tonks laughs feebly, wiping snot and tears from her face with the back of one hand before helping the baby latch onto her nipple in her parents’ bed. Then, in a voice of purest conviction, adds, “She won’t know war.”

“She’ll know it through us,” Fleur says. “She’ll know we are who we are because of it, that we met because of it, that she was made in it.”

“That’s a terrible legacy.” Tonks isn’t crying anymore, but she looks freshly grief-stricken at the prospect of her daughter’s future, raised by a couple of mourning vets, with none but the same for family. She’ll never be able to get away from it. “Let’s name her,” Tonks says, suddenly.

“Alasta?” Fleur asks grimly, following Tonks’s train of thought.

Tonks laughs, genuinely, if miserably. “Fuck no. We’re not saddling her with that.”

“What did you have in mind?” Fleur asks. “Please no horrible British names like Morag or Eunice.”

“No pretentious French names either,” Tonks says, adding, “Je suis Victoire!” in a high pitch. “Not my kid.”

Fleur looks at their daughter, nursing, eyes closed, in Tonks’s arms. Her tiny heart-shaped face so much like Tonks’s right now. Fleur thinks about what she loves about Tonks. “Something bright,” she suggests.

“Soleil?” Tonks jokes. 

“Sunny.”

Tonks looks at the baby, swipes a finger gently over one of her arms. “What do you think, little one?” she asks. The baby scrunches her face and lets out a small cry. “Sunny it is.”


	7. Chapter 7

Epilogue

_25 June 1999, Glastonbury Festival_

“It’s raining,” Kingsley says from under his clear rain poncho.

“There’s mud everywhere,” Sirius agrees merrily, seeming to enjoy the rain on his face. Must be the dog in him.

“Gah!” shrieks Sunny, clapping water droplets between her hands. Tonks is holding a huge brolly over herself, Fleur, and Sunny, who’s wearing a bright yellow rain jacket with a hood that looks like a duck’s bill. Despite the waterproofing, Sunny manages to reach out and touch the rain. 

“Une seconde.” Fleur swings her rucksack over one shoulder, dropping it to the ground at the same time as her knees hit the mud. She feels around inside and finds what she’s looking for in the depths of the bag—a little ‘Félicitations! You had a baby!’ gift to her and Tonks from Harry, courtesy, Tonks is sure, of Hermione Granger. From the outside, it looks like any other pineapple-patterned Muggle rucksack. From the inside, though, it’s a trove of all the things they could need to hand for Sunny.

“Tonks, may I?” Fleur asks Tonks from her spot on the ground.

“What are you doing down there?” Sirius demands.

“You’re not going to do something gross like propose, are you?” Tonks jokes, but sounds legitimately a little nervous. “I’m a live-in-sin kind of gal.”

“You’re being boring. I want to get going!” Sirius looks around, eyes darting about, more like a dog than ever. “I don’t want to miss anything!”

“There are at least five stages.” It’s Kingsley that breaks the news. “You’re going to miss a lot of things.”

Fleur taps Tonks’s foot and gestures that she wants her to raise it up off of the ground. Before obliging, Tonks hands Sunny to Kingsley, along with the brolly. Sunny immediately moves to tug on his earring, but Kingsley’s Sunny-senses are well honed, and he jerks his head backward, dodging her doughey hand. “Wait, is this like a Cinderella thing?” 

“Shhh,” Fleur advises. She pulls off Tonks’s Birkenstocks, one at a time, and replaces them with green Wellies covered in a sunflower pattern.

“I take it all back!” Tonks shrieks, evidently thrilled. “These are awesome fashion and also I can no longer feel mud in between my toes.” She admires the boots, lifting her left foot off the ground and moving her foot this way and that. When Fleur gets up out of the mud Tonks leans in for a kiss, letting Fleur close the distance. “I love the Wellies. I love you. You are so thoughtful.”

“Where are mine?” Sirius whines. Fleur has found that living through the war, being exonerated, and having Harry move in with him and Remus has really improved his mood. Sort of. He’s less prone to brooding and more inclined to whinging now. No wonder Remus took a pass on joining them (“Thanks for the invite, but why not have a special weekend, just mothers and godfathers?” Though Fleur is sure he mumbled something to Bill about not dodging bottles of piss in Glastonbury for a million Galleons after that.).

Fleur roots around for another minute and pulls out two more pairs of boots. “No points for guessing which are yours, Sirius,” Kingsley says, nodding to the pair covered in crescent moons. When Sirius has his on, Kingsley hands him the baby and the brolly and puts on his own crown-patterned pair. Fleur finally grabs her own—covered in sunflowers because sometimes you have to be sickeningly matchy-matchy. Sunny gets hers last, sunflowers too, just to propel the adorable pastiche to nauseous levels. Without the benefit of the brolly, water streams down Fleur’s forehead and neck—she doesn’t have hair to sop it up. Though it’s been over a year since she required anonymity, she’s kept her hair shaved. She made a conscious decision to keep it, to move beyond simply accepting it or being used to it. Over the intervening months, she’s grown to like it. She doesn’t miss it. She’s not sure how or when, but it’s come to feel more like ‘her’ than long tresses. Plus, not getting her hair pulled by Sunny is a nice fringe benefit.

“Bon. On est prêts à partir ! We are ready.” Fleur’s taken to speaking in French and repeating herself in English. With the war over, her parents and Gabrielle visit a lot, and vice versa, and she wants her daughter to speak French.

“I want to do psychedelic drugs and meet best friends I’ll never see again,” Sirius discloses.

“You’re in the right place.” Kingsley nods to the strap of the tent-carrier slung over Sirius’s shoulder. When Fleur and Tonks mentioned camping, Harry foisted a tent upon them, telling them he never wanted to see it again. “I want not to take care of you when you are tripping.”

“I just want to get covered in mud so I have an excuse to change every four hours and show off all my festival outfits,” Tonks admits. “I packed so many patterned dungarees. And they will ALL power clash with my new Wellies.” She looks positively chuffed about it. “Oh! You know what, that’s a lie. I also want to see Blondie and scream myself hoarse for her.”

“Blondie will make us happy,” Kingsley agrees in the same voice he uses to address the Ministry press corps.

“You’re in for a treat.” Sirius sounds smug, like he knows better than they do her musical prowess because he saw her live decades ago.

It’s been a horrible year. They and everyone they know and love are all fucked up from the war, from living cooped up, or running for their lives, or both interchangeably. It did a number on Harry, but living with Sirius, being taken care of for the first time in his life, together with hella therapy, seem to be helping. 

Despite their own grief, Fleur and Tonks have found themselves in the position of being effectively forced to pull it together. Sunny can’t wait for them to finish crying to be fed, or changed, or held. Neither of them is over everything. In honesty, after getting together in war time, they are still cultivating their own love. It grows, but it was planted in such odd soil. Some days it feels like they are new lovers, not like they’ve been together for over two years. Some days it really feels like what it is—two young people who had a kid together unexpectedly. Some days, when Sunny’s at her crankiest, Fleur wants to tear her hair out. It’s a good job she has none. Other days, though, everything Sunny does seems adorable and hilarious and photo-worthy. Regardless of what kind of day Sunny, or Tonks, or indeed Fleur is having, they’ve agreed they don’t want their life to be a perpetual motion charm of resentment. They’re having fun, dammit. They’ve earned it. And Sunny deserves it. And they love having fun with her. So here they are, with their best friends—eager, besotted godfathers of their child.

“Don’t let’s dawdle,” Sirius urges.

“You can put up the tent,” Kingsley delegates. “You need to expend some energy.”

“If elected, I will not serve.” Sirius deflects, like a statesman.

Sunny starts grabbing at Kingsley’s collar. “She’s hungry,” Kingsley observes. Fleur hands Tonks the rucksack and takes Sunny from Kingsley. She’s wearing a nineteenth-century, buttony top she made herself. She undoes a few buttons, brings Sunny to her exposed nipple, and lets her latch on.

Sirius taps one Wellie in the mud impatiently. 

“Sirius, take it down a notch or we’ll exile you from the tent whenever we’re nursing and you won’t get to see our nips.”

“Some threat,” Sirius parries.

“Pft,” comes from Fleur’s lips.

“Exactly, Fleur—pft. Gay men love tits.”

“A sweeping generalisation, but not without truth,” Kingsley admits.

“Enough now.” When Sunny’s well in place, Fleur begins walking and the rest follow. Tonks isn’t embarrassed to nurse in public by any means, but Fleur loves walking around, going about life with Sunny, whatever that might mean in the moment. She finds it gratifying on a deeper level than looking like some Hollywood notion of a wet dream ever gave her. Plus it feels good to share some of the embodied parental labour with Tonks now that she can. It’s not about trying to cancel out the time Tonks spent pregnant—the morning sickness or the aching hips or the maple cravings or the super sensitive sense of smell. It’s about offering what she can. Thirteen months of parenting have taught Fleur more about balance than she ever learned before; each of them give what they can when they can in the ways they can. It’s not about 50/50—that’s simply not achievable.

“You remembered her ear muffs?” Tonks asks Fleur as they advance towards the camp grounds.

“Bien sur.” Fleur nods to the rucksack, which still holds, amongst their festival provisions, a small pair of fluffy pink ear muffs—Mandrake-level ear protection—for Sunny.

Tonks leans over and pecks Fleur on the cheek. “Grand! Onward!” she proclaims.

Fleur turns her head to snatch a kiss on the mouth. “Oui. Onward.”


End file.
